


the last days of hope county

by vmbr



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Alcohol, Aliens, Artificial Intelligence, Bliss (Far Cry), Blood and Gore, Coping, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Existential Crisis, F/M, Family Dynamics, Mild Language, Miscommunication, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Time Loop, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-06-28 11:29:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 62,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15706326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vmbr/pseuds/vmbr
Summary: Caught in a time loop, Rook goes fishing.John Seed, a series of terrible mistakes, and the aliens, conspire against this. (There's also the slight possibility that she might be vanishing from existence, but Rook isn't thinking about that.)





	1. civilians by the wayside

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [caught in the middle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14321850) by [monstermash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monstermash/pseuds/monstermash). 



Lying flat on her back in the dirt, staring up into the blue skies of a never-ending summer, Rook wonders what life is like on Mars.

Here on Earth, in Larry Parker's backyard with the weeds and the sci-fi junk, it's not going so great. Holland Valley might look peaceful in the sunshine, but she knows better than to put much stock in sunny days. In three months this place will be a flaming wreck. Just like everything else.

The magnopulsar is in her grip, powering down with a whine and a slowly dying light. Rook turns her head away. She can hear overstressed generators rattling around the property, the  _ping_ of hot metal and the buzz of wires. Exhaust fumes, blue-white and acrid, drift across the ground.

Nowhere does the Deputy Sheriff handbook explain what to do in the event of Armageddon. Or time travel. And they really should add something, Rook feels strongly about this, they really should add  _something_ to the orientation packet about the motherfucking aliens. For example: how to avoid mishandling alien technology that puts life on repeat between  _arresting your first cult leader_ and  _the end of the world as we know it_ would have been both applicable and deeply appreciated in light of recent events.

Letting go of the magnopulsar sends both her arms pins-and-needles numb. Rook makes a protesting noise, only too glad to leave the gun on the packed earth while she rubs feeling back into her palms.

Boomer trots up to snuffle at her with his cold, wet nose. She gives his ruff a comforting scratch, digging her fingers into his coarse fur.

"Here, boy," she says, gathering him into a hug, "I'm right here."

He barks, rearing back to lick her face with a hot wash of dog-breath.

Rook clings to him.

This is not the first time she's died in a nuclear blast and woken up in Larry Parker's teleportation cage. Fact is: the bombs are coming, and when they do she is going to die. And then she is going to wake up three months in the past, with an alien weapon in hand and an end-of-days ache in her soul.

Rook gets up, patting Boomer on the head as he dances around her.

Leaving the magnopulsar in the dust, in the middle of the cage, she goes inside to raid the fridge for beer. Larry's not going to be coming back for his beer, but Rook is. This can of beer will be here for her time and time again.

It opens with the  _crk-fzzz_ of a twelve-step program down the drain.

Flopping into the shade of the porch, Rook presses the cold can to her temple, feels the condensation wet her skin and shivers.

Joseph Seed, if he ever finds out, would be sure to blame her for this corkscrew in time they now inhabit. He might even be right. Maybe she  _shouldn't_ have tried to vaporize him with a giant alien ray-gun in the middle of a nuclear explosion / possibly the apocalypse. There had been undeniably negative effects on the behavior of time and space.

And Rook has no clue how to undo them.

Maybe it was science. Maybe it was God. Maybe it was the goddam magnopulsar. Whatever the reason, she is once again drinking beer in Larry's backyard - too early for the bombs to fall, and far too late to get out of Hope County before they do.

Boomer snuffles around the yard, digging at the dirt with the perfect happiness of a dog in the sunshine.

Rook sits on the edge of the porch, drinking, and goes nowhere for a long time.

* * *

When the roaming Angels and the cultist patrols finally drive her away from the lab two days later, she's got a plan.

It's very simple: go fishing, wait for the end of the world.

Lazy days by the river sound way more appealing than any of the alternative activities offered by Hope County. Most of which involve being hunted by scruffy cultists and other wild animals, which is just  _no_. Rook will take a hard pass on reprising the world's most dangerous game this time around, thanks anyway.

That firmly in mind, the first thing she does after leaving the trailer is pick up one of the many fishing rods abandoned by the side of the Henbane.

The second thing she does is she makes a mistake.

She rescues Burke.

In her defense, it wasn't premeditated.

She spots him wandering a Bliss field at the edge of Faith's territory, looking like an easy target from her vantage point up on the Henbane River Rail Bridge. No peggies, no guards, nothing but white flowers and the slow, lazy churn of the river between him and freedom. That, and a few Angels, but they hardly count. It's such a perfect opportunity she almost can't believe it.

Reaching down, she scratches Boomer's ears.

"What do you think, boy?" she asks him. "Am I going to regret this?"

(She does.)

Stealthy, she creeps up through the thin brown grasses. Bliss flowers sway in the breeze, white and sweet on the other side of the fence. Rook shoves her face into the collar of her shirt until she can taste river-mud and the hint of wet dog. There is nothing less like Bliss than wet dog on a hot day.

"Burke," she whispers, slightly nasal with the effort of not inhaling. "Burke."

He doesn't hear, gazing raptly into empty air. He also ignores the series of rocks she throws at him with increasingly irritated accuracy. Fortunately, so do the Angels. Making a noise of frustration, Rook looks around for something that won't attract the wrong kind of attention.

Inspiration strikes.

Grabbing her fishing rod, she casts the lure out in front of him.

Burke's whole face lights up and he throws his arms out wide, embracing the line in a hug meant to contain something far larger.

Rook wiggles it enticingly, hoping that he sees something he wants to hold on to. She holds back a cheer when he latches onto the hook, and slowly starts reeling him in. Wasn't there something about being fishers of men in the good book? End-time prophecies are being fulfilled all over the place.

Keeping fast hold of his prize, Burke trails after her to the tree-line, but the growing scowl on his face suggests he's not as happy with his hallucinations as he was.

Rook risks standing up straight to check the position of the Angels. They're grouped together, tending flowers at the far end of the field. No threat.

"Marshal," she says, quiet, "Let's go."

He frowns. The lure drops from his hand, forgotten. There's something like recognition in his face for her, though.

"Sir." She winds in the line, slings the rod over her shoulder. "Time to leave."

In the end, she has to take him by the hand and lead him down to the river. For lack of a better idea, Rook tows him back over into Holland Valley. On no account should he be left around Faith.

They make it safe to the other shore, but their dip in the water doesn't help Burke out of the Bliss. He remains caught in delusions, waving his hands through the air and mumbling about work-life balance in a way that suggests he wouldn't have been such easy prey for Faith if he'd had a proper vacation beforehand.

Rook does not feel any better after she's got them safely hidden in an empty hunting cabin. There's a set of bunk-beds in one corner, deer heads and antlers on the walls. No sign of what happened to the people who used to live here. Possible they converted, possible they got out. Either way, they're going to die in three months.

(That thought sounds far too close to what was written in Joseph's book, but she's still pretending she never got desperate enough to read that thing.)

Burke settles easily into a lower bunk, staring at his fingers with a kind of fixed fascination. Occasionally, he lets out a hiccuping laugh. Sometimes, he cries.

Things quiet down after Rook tells him to stop, but she still can't shake her bad feeling.

Hooking her thumbs into the back of her belt, she patrols the windows, shoulders tight. Insects chirp in the bushes, hopping and fluttering through the tall grass. The wooden targets outside, deer-shaped and scored with bullet holes, stare at the cabin door mockingly as the sunset paints them bloody red.

Where is Faith, what's keeping her from playing her usual tricks? Rook stares at the road, her hand gun resting uneasy in its holster. What  _is_ it that keeps the heralds so neatly confined to their own territories? Nothing but the word of Joseph, or do they have some sort of honor code?

There's no answer but the regular crackle of the radio, the usual calls for help that Rook ignores with pinpricks of guilt every time.

Looking over at Burke, she gets the bad feeling that she's taken a big step backwards on the whole  _go fishing, forget the apocalypse_ front.

Rook doesn't sleep well most nights anymore. Listening to Burke sing  _row row row your boat_  to the dark with passionate desperation, she doesn't sleep at all.

* * *

 John is not above gloating.

He's been questioned by Joseph, Faith, and even Jacob on when he intends to bring the missing deputy in for baptism. Which he has been  _meaning_ to do, but there's quite a lot on his plate at the moment and he's not going to rush the reaping for one sinner. No matter how aggravating that particular sinner proves herself to be.

Happily, his latest report suggests that he might not have to suffer any longer. Which John is just fine with. Let one of his siblings deal with chaos incarnate. He has more important things to do ... like enjoying his little moment of vindication.

Lounging in a chair in his confession room, feet propped up on his work bench and a glass of club soda in one hand, he picks up his radio.

"Faith, have _you_ found the missing deputy yet?" he asks on their usual frequency.

"No, John," she comes back as sweet as ever, but he knows that's a note of irritation in her voice. "No one's seen her since you lost Fall's End."

He grins, unsurprised by her attempt to shove the blame back on him.

"Really?" He clicks his tongue, feigns surprise and draws it out. "I heard that you misplaced a certain US Marshal today. Sounds like just the sort of thing our wayward deputy might have a hand in."

"Even mistakes have purpose," she assures him. "The Marshal will come home soon, and the deputy with him. No one can hide from the sight of the Angels."

John's smile turns sour. "I noticed."

His men have been complaining for days about Angels wandering off their assigned tasks, leaving their work to shamble mindlessly through the fields and woods. He pauses in the act of sipping his drink, an unpleasant thought occurring.

"You haven't been sending Angels after the deputy, have you?" he demands, tipping his chair down to get his feet flat on the floor. "In  _my_ valley?"

Faith hums, sounding so innocent but John sees right through that act, he  _perfected_ that act and he's not falling for it now.

"The Father wants us to help one another," she tries to soothe him. "Everything will be so much happier once the deputy walks the path, don't you think?"

" _I_ think you should stop sampling your own product," John snaps back, squeezing the radio like it's her throat. He's the one in charge of sorting which sinners go where, and he does not appreciate anyone interfering with his process. "Get your dolls back to work, Faith. Or I'll show you just what happened to the last person who wore that name."

He lets go of the button with a harsh breath. Before he can get properly warmed up to further threats that won't get him in trouble with Joseph, a new voice comes on.

"This frequency is for work and emergencies," Jacob rumbles grumpily from across the county. "Stop squabbling, it's bad for morale."

John bites off a hard noise that does nothing to communicate the depths of his displeasure, and throws the radio at the wall. It bounces off with a rattle, and disappointingly does not break.

Digging a thumbnail into his wrist, he consoles himself by thinking of what will happen when this latest 'Faith' starts to degrade like the others. The Bliss, like any drug, takes its toll after all. He catches himself scratching at his arm, and thinks longingly about that bottle of whiskey he left back at the ranch.

At least the deputy is out of his hair. And if God has heard any of his prayers, she'll turn up dead in a ditch, devoured by bears, no matter what Joseph says. John has absolute faith in his brother, of course, but surely God can have a little mercy and spare them this particular plague?

Rewarding as it is to finally avenge himself on all those who have scoffed at them over the years, John is looking forward to Eden. It's a tall order, doing what Joseph wants without breaking any of the rules in the process. It's the most delicate balancing act of John's career and he has no idea how long he has to keep it up. Joseph keeps promising  _soon_ and  _not yet_. John really hates both of those answers.

He drains his glass, and tries not to think about the Collapse.

* * *

Burke comes back to himself on the third morning. Predictably, he wants revenge, the whole Seed family arrested, the Project locked up and shut down for good. He and Rook can do it all together, guns and gung-ho glory.

"No," Rook says. "Sir."

She's not going to march in Burke's crusade any more than she's going to help Joseph manifest his destiny. Rook walks her own path now. A narrow, muddy path to fish and comfortable obscurity with no room for distractions.

Since Burke is well enough to lose his temper at her refusal, she figures that he'll be fine on his own. Rook slings her gear over her shoulder as she heads for the door.

"Don't you fucking dare-" he grabs for her arm.

Jamming her handgun into his throat is pure instinct. Rook doesn't even realizes what she's done until her finger is on the trigger.

"Get that gun out of my face, rookie," Burke snaps, flushed and furious.

 _Fuck._ Rook holds on hard, reddish spots blooming in her peripheral as the gun presses in harder. Twisting the skin of his neck, choking off his words. Fuck, she can't shoot Burke. he's stupid as hell, he's a raging liability, but he's one of the team. She doesn't want to shoot him.

(But she does, she does.)

She won't shoot him because he still believes in doing their job.

Rook lets out shaky breath, and lowers the gun.

"When this is over," he promises, spit-flecked with anger, "I will put you away, deputy. Everyone is going to know what an insubordinate chickenshit you are. Now give me your service weapon and get the hell out of my sight before I shoot you."

She leaves him the sidearm and the radio, and beats a quick retreat to where Boomer waits for her by the road.

Pulling the gun was a reflex. At least she didn't pull the trigger too.

Okay, she thinks, once there are several miles between her and the cabin, that worked out okay. He'll make contact with the resistance. He'll be the hero. Rook has the firm sense that someone should be pushing back against the cult. Just ... not her. Nothing she has done has made a lick of difference to the fate of the world so far.

She doesn't believe in fighting Joseph, doesn't believe in joining him, doesn't believe the National Guard will come when they call. She has no purpose. And that makes her free.

Rook hikes her fishing rod over her shoulder, whistles for Boomer, and sets out to beat the regional fishing record for biggest small-mouthed bass.

* * *

Without a radio, she gets her news from various hunters over the next week. Burke does indeed make contact with the resistance, crossing the valley to tangle with John's operation. Good choice, Rook reflects wisely as she tries to work her fishing line out of the knot she somehow tied it in. John is a more forgiving target than the others.

From the rumors she gets off a passing fisherman (along with the sad report that there are no small-mouthed bass this side of the Henbane), the main roads of Holland Valley are devolving into an orgy of violence and John and Burke run-and-gun each other's outposts. They're probably both getting off on it, collateral damage be damned.

Rook lies at her ease in the tall river reeds and contemplates yet another gorgeous sunset over the mountains. Hope County really is beautiful when it isn't trying to murder you with extreme prejudice forever and ever amen.

(A trio of wandering Angels chases her out of her spot a few hours later, but Rook doesn't mind. It was nice while it lasted.)

A few days later, she regrets her casual attitude when she wanders smack into the middle of a firefight.

* * *

John's life goes from tentatively looking up to down right disastrous in a matter of days. The Marshal, Burke, storms around the valley, pulling rank and throwing people at John's property with no regard for their lives. He doesn't care how many die, either, he's willing to sacrifice his entire side just to win.

It's enough to make John almost miss the silent persecution of the deputy, who had never responded to any of John's overtures. An unspeaking stubbornness that had irritated him to no end ... until Burke came along and reminded him how  _infuriating_ it was to have his work constantly interrupted by the petty rantings of a small man on a power-trip.

"Let me help," Faith keeps calling to say, volunteering the services of those empty husks she's purified a little too much.

"Send the Chosen after him," Jacob suggests, a bit of unsolicited advice which really means ' _get your shit together before I do it for you_.'

Somedays, John finds it very hard to love his siblings when he  _hates them all_.

Nothing he does is good enough. The Father still declines to visit, communicating through distant, impersonal letters that carve up John's insides and leave him grasping for anything _anything_ that will get him the approval he craves. The work he does is right, but his feelings are wrong and they're poisoning everything. Despite this, he can't bring himself to ask Joseph what to do, what's wrong with him and how to fix it. Unwilling to draw more attention to his failures. Too much a coward to question.

He doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to hear that he's going to be abandoned if he can't clean up his own act. That Joseph will lock him out of Eden and leave him to burn like he deserves.

Driven by these greater fears, John finally confronts his lesser anxiety about being caught outdoors in the Collapse. A day at the ranch should be safe enough. He can pick up a few personal items, look over the new plane, enjoy one last night in his own bed.

And then it turns out he can't do any of that because the resistance comes to liberate his fucking  _house_.

* * *

Rook is only there because she read an article claiming this is a sweet spot for sturgeon, tucked away behind John Seed's ranch. Unfortunately, the fish are stubborn and she has no clue what kind of bait they like. Sitting casually on the dock, she flips through the magazine for pointers, unworried about being spotted because who goes looking for a junior deputy in the Baptist's backyard? It's absurd, that's why it works.

Or it should have done, right up until she hears the tell-tale buzz of Nick Rye's plane overhead.

He's strafing the ranch. Boomer pricks up his ears, whining as the familiar rattle of machine-gun fire joins the shorter bark of pistols and the boom of an RPG. There's shouting now too, not all of it peggie prayers.

She drops a hand to her gun.

Burke must really have lit a fire under the resistance to get them to storm the ranch with him.

 The river laps at the dock. Sun-warm and full of fish.

In a display of remarkably poor judgment, Rook leaves it to climb up the hill.

Just a quick look, she tells herself. Things are already exploding, so there's no reason why her presence should make that any worse. She'll just check on Nick and the resistance, maybe find a replacement radio in the chaos, and be back on the river in minutes.

Then Carmina crashes.

She comes down almost on top of Rook, diving through the trees at a hard slant. Trailing smoke and engine sputtering out. Rook throws herself flat on the ground as the plane smashes past overhead, splinters and sparks raining down.

It continues on down the hill, tearing metal and scraping branches in hideous cacophony, until there comes a final, tree-shaking impact. Bits of wood and shrapnel patter down.

Rook pokes her head up cautiously.

Carmina is crumpled into the base of a large tree some distance down the slope, her nose jammed into the trunk and canary-yellow wings riddled with bullet holes. Smoke wraps her in ominous clouds.

Scrambling to her feet, Rook takes off running for the wreckage without a second thought.

No parachute, Nick was too low to bail out even if he did manage to land right-side up. Flames lick the plane's underbelly. He only has a few minutes before he either burns to death, or the peggies come to finish him off.

She wrenches the dangling pilot's door clean off to get in.

It's not Nick.

It's John.

He lies slumped over the controls, rag-doll limp and bruising all down one side of his face. Must've smacked into the control panel on the ride down. He always was the easiest one to kill. A quick sniper's shot during a baptism and then he was gone, gone for months at a time.

Rook stares at him now in the ruins of his stolen plane. Glass cracks in the heat, sparks spreading to the trees around them. Thick black smoke puffs up around them, stinking like melting rubber and burning paint.

A profound sense of fatalism grips Rook. Something is on fire in Hope County and reinforcements are right around the bend. But John will burn before they get here.

And he's not even conscious to enjoy it.

She itches a sore spot where her left glove doesn't fit, indecisive. A spark lands on her bare forearm, a little pockmark of soot and pain. Flames blacken the trunks of nearby trees, crackling in the heat.

Nothing she does matters.

So she drags him out and takes him with her.

* * *

Rook heads up-river to where the water shallows out in reeds and marshy hillocks. There's a place where the trees grow up close to the water, providing safe cover for a small camp. Muddy terrain where search parties will have to splash around, announcing their presence to both Rook and the local wildlife. Most of the local wildlife is bears, which generally act as a deterrent to the cultists but not to Rook.

John doesn't wake up during the short trip. At this point, however, Rook has a lot of experience with injuries, so she's not worried. He'll revive sooner or later.

(Or he won't, and spare them both the indignity.)

She ties him to a pine tree, lashing his arms backwards around the trunk with her climbing rope. Curious, Boomer snuffles at them, growling at whatever he smells. Blood, thinks Rook, and burning plane. She nudges his head away so she can test that she hasn't accidentally cut off the circulation to John's hands.

Then, in a rare burst of foresight, she shuffles around to gag him with strips of his own vest. Because his first words are either going to be screams for help or some sort of bondage-based criticism of her knot-tying skills. Rook does not want to deal with either.

Prisoner secured in a very non-regulation bind, there's not much to do besides get comfortable until he comes round. An afternoon of unconsciousness and light kidnapping is business as usual in Hope County.

Safe on the other side of that equation, Rook appreciates the absence of terror and rope-burn. Leaning back against a tree roughly opposite John's, she twists apart pine needles for their sharp green scent. The sun slides down in the west, light turning golden and honey-warm in the treetops.

Boomer sprawls on the ground nearby, head on his paws, ears pricking up and down at the sound of whitetail deer. No one in either side seems to be looking in this direction, although once she hears the far-off buzz of a helicopter.

A radio might be nice right now, Rook reflects. Life feels more free without a constant litany of threats against her skin and sanity, but she misses the local bulletins. And she really should get back in touch with Dutch.

Just as soon as this business with John Seed is done.

Rook glances at him from time to time, idly flicking bits of pine needle in his direction.

She watched him die once. Up close. He'd been oozing blood and panic, crawling for his bunker, babbling accusations and threats and  _what if what if_. She could answer that question for him now, if he wants.

( _yes, Joseph is right, yes the world ends, yes, everything is washed away_ )

Boomer growls, startling a grouse out of the bushes and sending it flapping away in distress. Rook starts, snapping to the awareness that her hands are empty and it's getting dark. She glances over at John reflexively.

He's glaring at her so hard she actually blinks in surprise.

His mouth moves beneath the gag, fabric puffing in and out through a vaguely wet series of shapes that still look distinctly antagonistic. The bruises on his face have darkened to an unhappy red-purple. But John Seed is still pretty enough to make a girl jealous, even his hair gets messy in a charming way. His expression, however, suggests that he is going to be very ungrateful to have been rescued from certain fiery doom.

Rook sighs. She hasn't even done anything to him yet. Not this time around, anyway.

Taking a moment for herself, she brushes down a patch of dirt and builds a small fire. Hopefully it won't attract any cultists. Or cougars, wolves, wolverines, skunks ... the list goes on.

John does not look any happier by firelight.

Reaching over, Rook gets a finger under the gag and pulls it out of his mouth. Of course, he immediately starts talking. In a way that suggests he's been awake for a while and thinking all sorts of unpleasant things.

"Deputy." John projects an upsetting amount of strained self-control in that one word. "I will forgive you this latest inconvenience. I know it is hard to throw off old habits and, steeped in sin as you are, you may find it more difficult than most."

Despite being tied up, and not very tall to begin with, he still manages to look down his nose at her. The rich Southern lawyer, tied to a tree in backwoods Montana. Rook is very tempted to laugh.

"Let me go, and we can consider this a desperate cry for my help."

She opens her fist, lets the bunker key dangle from its cord. And watches all his demands twist into instant desperation.

"You  _thief._ " He jolts against the ropes like he's being stabbed. " _Give that back._ "

The key swings perilously close to the flames.

John struggles, dropping from arrogance to stark terror, babbling, "You have to give it back, it's the only one, Joseph-"

"Free Hudson."

John shuts his mouth hard, breathing out sharply through his nose. Staring at Rook, who stares back. He definitely wants to carve a few pieces off her now. His face is white, bruises livid red-purple and jaw clenched shut on words too provocative to say to the person who holds his future swaying on a string.

 _It's not me, it's fate,_ she wants to tell him, any feeling of triumph draining right out of her.  _Fate wants us to die over and over again, running the same doomed path forever. We deserve it. For all the bad things we've done, and all the bad things we let people do to us._

"You don't even know what you have," John manages at last, gritting out words between fear and frustration. "You don't know anything! You-"

It doesn't matter what Rook does or doesn't know.

"Free Hudson," she cuts him off, and he lets her. "And you're free too."

His eyes are blue, desperate and still so angry. "Deputy Hudson should count herself lucky to remain in her current position. Ungrateful as she is for all the effort I put in, she's been saved from the consequences of the path she chose. A path that  _your_ actions at the church laid out for us."

Rook shrugs. Their failure to arrest Joseph was a while back for her. She takes a second, does the math on the time between the arrest and the apocalypse, multiplied by each repeat ... _F_ _uck._

She loses track of John for a few. (She's been trapped here for over a year. There is no future and maybe no God.) Fire pops loudly in her ears as sap bubbles out of green wood and burns sticky sweet. Rook doesn't hear any of what John spits at her as she settled deeper into the ground. The night presses in hot and close, air heavy with the rich rotting smell of water-logged grass.

She disassembles her latest handgun, fingers shaking. ( _One radiation, two radiation, three radiation..._ ) By the time she's counted to three hundred, she feels better. The gun is clean in her lap, reassembled on instinct and muscle memory. Grease smears her fingers and gloves. Rook wipes them on the cleaning rag. She checks the magazine, reloads.

It's fine. It's loaded. Nothing is on fire and everything is fine.

John is staring again. This time with the aggressive silence of someone who has tried to get attention and failed several times in a row. He jerks up straighter when she looks at him, an aborted little struggle, angry creases between his brows.

"Are you quite finished?" he demands, like she's answerable to him.

There's a tightness underneath it. In her little moment of clarity, Rook can read him easy. He's alone with someone who just checked out of reality, he's terrified of losing his key, he's starting to realize that rescue might not get to him in time. The dark woods probably don't help.

Tree branches creak overhead, a scratching rattle of twigs, and John twitches a little. Yeah, Rook thinks, he doesn't like the dark either. She dumps another branch on the fire.

Then she puts the gun in her lap, folds her hands over it to show that she's both attentive and prepared to pistol-whip him in the face. It seems important to be firm.

"Radio your men to take Hudson to Fall's End and leave her there unharmed," she instructs clearly, because she thought this out while he was sleeping off a plane crash. "Then you can have your key and go."

"Now, deputy," John sounds so pleasant when he's angry-scared. It's certainly doing wonders for his complexion and energy levels. "Stealing is wrong. I can help you with that. You need to confess, to own your sins before they can be lifted from you." He glances towards the gurgle of the river in the dark. "We can start now."

Rook shakes her head. Ink and flower-water haven't made her a better person yet.

"I'll get Hudson out myself if you won't trade," she warns him.

There's going to be a lot more damage done to his things that way, and he'll have seen enough of her work pre-loop to know it.

John eyes her narrowly. Trying to figure out if she's serious about storming his bunker with nothing the key, a dog, and a fishing rod.

Rook doesn't tell him that it wouldn't even be the stupidest thing she's done. And anyway, she's got him by the balls with this. He might have some ego at stake in getting Hudson to atone, but that's nothing compared to his whole bunker on the line.

John smiles, eyes tight and furious as he bows to the inevitable.

"Alright," he agrees, suspiciously polite for someone being coerced. "I understand. Your friend will be delivered to Fall's End, and then you'll return what you stole from me. Call it a good first step towards building our future understanding."

"No double-cross," she warns him, looping the cord with its key around her wrist, "Or this gets dropped in the middle of Silver Lake."

John somehow looks offended at the suggestion he could be less than honest.

"Lying is a sin, deputy. We've come to an agreement here. Now give me your radio, I'd like to get back to my work as soon as possible. You're not the only sinner in desperate need of my attention."

Rook pauses. She doesn't have a radio.

At her hesitation, John gives an expectant little wriggle of his shoulders. "Well?"

"I ... you don't have a radio?" Rook asks, slightly helpless.

She hadn't actually searched him, beyond checking that he was breathing and not hiding anything sharp up his sleeves. 

The look he gives her could peel the skin off a cougar.

"My radio was in my plane," he says cuttingly, "Which, last I remember, was on fire and plummeting to the ground. So unless you stole that too, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the radio I  _used_ to have is no longer available."

Rook sinks in confounded silence. John Seed and radios are so intrinsically connected in her mind that she'd just assumed he could produce them on command. Except that's stupid and now he's looking at her like  _she's_ stupid. Which she is. She really is. A crawling flush of embarrassment comes over her.

Where  _are_ they going to get a radio this late? It's not like she can drag him to the local hardware store and not get shot by one side or the other.

A loud, rhythmic beat of rotor-blades breaks the awkward moment, coming towards them from the east.

Helicopter.

Rook launches herself forward, kicking dirt over the fire to smother it.

Sliding to her knees in dust beside John, she claps a hand over his mouth before he can shout for help, half-wrapping herself around the tree trunk with momentum. He bites, hard. A mouthful of glove all he gets for it.

Behind her, Boomer splashes out into the water, barking wildly at the helicopter. Rook tries to get to the dog whistle with her free hand, but John takes advantage of the distraction to throw himself against the ropes. Legs kicking at her sideways but he can't get the angle right.

Rook steadies herself, gets a better grip on his face.

His teeth grind down, catching the skin of her palm through the glove. She digs her nails into his bruised jaw in warning, his beard dragging against the pads of her fingers. John just bites harder, eyes a manic shade of blue and air pulling in and out of his nose.

The helicopter turns slowly over the water, flashlight beams playing over the trees and the reeds. Boomer runs in agitated circles below, leaping uselessly at the peggies above his snapping teeth. The wet, snarling pitch of his barking rips right down to the animal part of her brain.

And John  _won't stop struggling_.

For a second, Rook sees red again. Every instinct screaming kill the peggie before he gives away her position-

_stop it stop it_

Her fingers curl over his ear, gripping the side of his head and she's a heartbeat away from slamming it back into the tree trunk over and over until he goes limp. Or wrenching it sideways like she's done to so many other people who got in her way.

_stopstop it_

She gets herself under control, panting, with her hands braced on the sides of his skull, one palm throbbing where she ripped away from his teeth. Obviously the setup for a neck-snap. John is rigid, pressing himself back into the tree trunk, every muscle gone tight. Little reflexive twitches running through him. Mouth half-open but silent.

The helicopter leaves, thumping away to the north. John doesn't call after it.

Rook releases him, rocking back on her heels. The sprawl of his legs changes as she moves, shifting just a little wider while his head tips just a little. Body relaxing into the ropes. Definitely suggestive, hopefully subconscious, and really not the right reaction to a near-death experience. Avoiding eye-contact, she leans just a little farther away.

(She's not so desperate to be hurt that she'll make a move on that.)

Intruders chased off, Boomer trots back into camp with head high and tail waving. Muddy up to his chest and all down his legs, and who's going to have to give him a bath later? Lucky the peggies didn't take a shot at him.

Giving up the pretense that she's not bone-weary, Rook runs her hands over her face, edges of the gloves catching on her skin and bare fingers rubbing through her scalp. This was supposed to be a real quick favor for Hudson, nothing more. But holding him, or his key, hostage for more than a few hours means committing to a degree of personal involvement. One that Rook feels will be bad for her health.

Not to mention her plans for the fish.

Tugging her gloves straight, examining the scrape marks from John's teeth, Rook surrenders to the understanding that this too will blow up in her face. Her palm isn't bleeding, but it stings every time she flexes her hand.

No way in hell is she dragging an uncooperative Seed around in the dark, with the hunters and the bears, looking for a radio in the middle of the night.

"We'll get a radio in the morning," she informs John, stamping out the last sparks of their ill-fated fire.

"Whatever you want, deputy," John says, still a little breathless as he lightly tests the ropes, tongue-over-teeth considering in the dark. Mouth red from the pressure of her hand. "You're in charge here."

Rook resists the desire to slam her own head into a tree-trunk.

When she doesn't reply, John pushes, a lilt of insinuation in his voice, "What do you suggest we do in the meantime?"

Rook shrugs, back on track. "Want to talk about the aliens?"

He makes a disbelieving, angry noise, flipping from plausibly-deniable seduction to fury in an instant. Rook sighs and reaches for the gag still dangling around his neck.  _Now who doesn't know anything?_

He bites her again. Rubbing the indent of his teeth in her exposed knuckle, Rook retreats to a safe distance. John looks even more frustrated at the lack of response. She gets the unhappy impression that he would be more comfortable if she roughed him up for real. He doesn't know what she wants if not to punch or fuck, she realizes. He's waiting for the axe to fall, hoping it didn't hit a vital point when it does.That's just really fucking sad.

Now she feels sorry for a man who nails skin to the walls.

Rook cuddles up to the most comfortable tree she can find. Fireflies blink in and out over the water, frogs and insects getting noisy now that the helicopter is gone. She squirms into a more comfortable position, down in the bark and the damp earth, and tries to sleep. Boomer will alert them if anything comes close to camp.

The last thing she sees is John's face, bruised and glowering under the strips of fancy vest wrapped around his mouth.

He probably doesn't know anything about the aliens anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had this idea kicking in the back of my head ever since I discovered Larry Parker's lab. Time travel is one of my favorite things, so "caught in the middle" was one of the first fics I started reading in this fandom and seeing it all the way through to the end was really inspiring! I find the image of John Seed trying to deal with a time traveling deputy really funny ... probably because he's the easiest to frustrate, while Faith or Joseph would accept everything and do nothing, and Jacob would be way too good at Shutting That Down. Story of their life, really.


	2. be not tempted

Rook wakes up to Boomer licking her ear.

"Good boy," she slurs, reaching one arm over to pat at his shoulder. "G'morning."

He paws at her, tail wagging and excited for a brand new day. Dawn paints the sky a pale, egg-shell blue. Rook looks up through the pines and thinks,  _fragile._ She digs a crumbling biscuit out of her pocket, offers it to Boomer and lets him slobber on her hand as he eats.

A pair of ducks quack out of the river, paddling around and dipping their heads below the surface, searching for food.

John is asleep, sagging against the tree in an uncomfortable slouch. He looks pretty sad by the early morning light, cheek and jaw still swollen with bruises. Arms hanging loose in the ropes. Stretching, Rook feels her own back  _crick_ in sympathy.

She gets up, stumbles over to the water and splashes her cheeks, scrubbing off the worst of yesterday's grime. Once she's settled things with John, she'll stop by Fall's End to grab a hot shower and a meal and maybe even try sleeping in a real bed. Water drips from her nose as she bends over the water. Her reflection wobbles, the muddy bottom of the riverbed showing through her face. Dirty and haunted as a peggie.

Maybe she should stick to the woods.

Rook wipes her face on her shirt, and nearly sticks herself in the eye with the key tied to her wrist. Pulling back to examine it, she flicks the metal idly with a finger. Warm from where she slept with her hands tucked close to her body, it glints harmlessly in the light. Well-polished, like every detail of John's appearance used to be. Worn in places, like he touches it often.

The first time she's taken it had felt so right.

She wishes she could go back, warn herself to leave well-enough alone. Then she snorts because that's funny. It really is.

Returning to camp, she stands over John. He's still sleeping, beard dropped down to his chest. Since the helicopter, there hasn't been another sign of pursuit. Even the Lamb of God sacristy stands deserted across the water. A faint pall of smoke hangs around it, drifting down the hill in distant reminder of old fires. Something that Rook associates with all churches now.

Leaving John to his beauty sleep, she grabs her fishing rod.

The sun has properly risen by the time a muffled thumping announces that he's awake.

Up to her ankles in the water, Rook looks over her shoulder to find him kicking one foot against the ground for attention. Face twisted irritably around the gag. She fumbles her line cast, but it doesn't matter. The water's too shallow for fish. Rook winds in her line, hook dragging on grass and water weeds, raking up pebbles. Feeling loose and easy in the morning light, she wades up to solid ground, mud squishing beneath her boots. Clouds of silt swirling up into clear water.

She crouches down beside John, resting her forearms on her bent knees and peering into his face.

"You don't have to come," she tells him, because she's been thinking some more. "Go back and this," she holds up the key, "gets left for you when Hudson reaches Fall's End safe."

John narrows his eyes, something muffled and  _nasty_ spitting out beneath the gag.

"Right," Rook realizes, "Sorry."

She drags the fabric free of his mouth, trying to be careful of the bruises and the scratch of his beard.

"Trying to pull out so soon?" John demands, the accusation somewhat ruined by the croak of his voice. "You're eager to abandon your commitments in the morning, deputy."

Frowning, Rook rocks in place a little. Whatever he said about trust last night, John clearly doesn't want her wandering off with his key. That's fair. Plans go spectacularly wrong around her. The only way to be sure his key doesn't get lost is to keep an eye on it himself.

"Okay." She stuffs the gag back in despite how he tries to jerk his head away. Getting up, she scratches at the back of her neck, thinking. "Radio."

She'll take one off a dead peggie if she has to, although that'll piss John off. Rook eyes the tightness of his jaw, and knows she's already done that. He's an angry sort of person, though. It can't be entirely her fault.

( _not everything is_ )

For now, life remains simple. All she has to do is get John on speaker, get Hudson released, and get away before anyone tries to tattoo her again. Then she can find a nice spot to sit down with her dog, her fishing rod, and a beer.

Standing over John, trying to figure out how to untie him from the tree without getting her face bashed in while he makes aggressive, angry eye-contact, she wonders how even the simplest dreams can seem so hard to achieve.

* * *

 John doesn't know why he can't see what Joseph sees.

The deputy lingers at the edge of the woods, staring out at the Bradbury's field. Hay-stubble shines dusty gold in the morning sun, the pale lines of the crop circle radiating out along the roll of the hills. John squints against the light, dirty and exhausted and incredibly irritable.

The person in front of him is almost offensively ordinary. Not ugly, not beautiful, neither compelling nor repulsive, the best that can be said about the deputy is that she's unremarkable. The sort of face you overlook in a crowd. The sort of person you forget. Their high-priority convert is absolutely average and it makes John want to break her face into something more interesting just to justify how much time he's spent staring at it.

Why this one, of all the multitude of sinners, should be given such a long and generous leash is beyond him.

His fingers scratch at the ropes binding his hands together, blue nylon fraying beneath his nails. He's heard the sound of planes over the trees, more than once, and the deputy has detoured several times to take them around the patrols combing the woods. But John is being patient, he's  _waiting_. He will creep through this trial at a snail's pace before he risks losing the key that she wears so arrogantly around her wrist.

"You ever meet Larry Parker?" she asks apropos of nothing.

It's the first thing she's said since dragging them away from the miserable bog they spent the night in. And John  _would_ answer, but he's got vest stuffed in his mouth, sour and tacky from sleep. His input is not required, however, as she doesn't even glance over to see him nod.

"Yeah," she mumbles to the field after a minute, "I guess no one knew."

John glares at the side of her face. She speaks as much nonsense awake as she does asleep, fragments of words and numbers breaking out of her dreams in the dark. Only John awake to witness. But a sinner's nights are always troubled.

Following the meandering pace she sets from tree to tree, John chews at the gag in impatience.

If he sends her to Jacob, she will run filthy and starving through his brother's tests until the wolves drag her down. The dog too, as it was meant to be. He barely recognizes the prize champion of the Pumpkin Patch under all that mud. Yet another thing the deputy has stolen.

He toys with the possibility that greed is her greatest affliction.

But last night, with her face right up next to his and her body half-sprawled in his lap, he'd seen the truth of her. Not all wrath is fire and fury. Cold angers are pervasive, old rages sunk in deep until drawn out with patient, prying hands. The deputy's atonement will be painful, but she's lucky: if stupidity were a proper sin, she'd have to be flayed entirely to remove it. She might not even survive, which is a pleasant thought.

John sets his teeth in a biting smile. His hands are tied  _in front of him_. It's all can do not to pull the gag off himself and explain just why climbing rope - stretchy, flexible, meant to absorb the force of a falling body - makes a terrible substitute for handcuffs. But timing is everything. He can wait.

The remains of a silo stand out in the field, a casualty of her rampage last week. Yet another loss he'll be taking out of her hide.

His gaze skates along the sweep of her shoulder, the dip of her spine. He should be picking where to place the marks for best effect, display and object lesson he'll make her for the resistance, but he's not. Last night had reminded him just how  _long_ it's been since he was tied up and fucked. By anyone, attractive or not. And the deputy is smudged with dust and ash and John itches to drag her down to the river and hold her under.

What shape will she be, when all the sin is washed away? Will he understand why the Father wants her preserved?

The dog growls at his heels when he falls too far behind. Half-lost in the trees, the deputy stops, glancing over her shoulder and waiting for him to catch up. Her face blank and empty in the shade. The stumbling block against which they've fallen for weeks, and she might as well  _be_ a block for all the expression she wears.

When she comes to him for atonement, he will lay such a mark on her, she'll split right open. She'll  _have_ to show him just what makes her worthy of Joseph's attention. John smiles, tongue curling against the gag. Fingernails picking away.

* * *

 They make it a full hour without trouble, weaving a roundabout path in the trees between the roads and the fields. Rook has them angled for the Bradbury place in hopes of scavenging a radio, but there's a lot of activity on both ground and air. The Chosen fly over in planes at regular intervals, foot patrols beating the bushes with a military-grid precision that makes her cautious. Slows her down to a crawl.

Turns out, kidnapping a herald might be a bigger deal than killing one.

John is playing nice, though, which makes a difference. And they almost make it.

Until Boomer growls, dropping Rook into the cover of some hay bales on pure instinct.

She peers around the stack, straw snagging at her hair and prickling straight through her clothes. John remains standing, out in the middle of the barnyard and confused like he's never heard a guard dog sound the alarm before. The green dot of a laser-sight moving up his chest.

Rook surges forward, grabs him around the ankles and yanks him down. The  _zing_ of a sniper's bullet hits the dirt behind them. John recognizes  _that,_ and scrambles to join her in cover.

They crouch together in silence, breathing fast and shallow.

The green dot prowls just beyond their feet, searching for a target. Rook gets a sudden, very bad jolt of recognition.

"Grace?" she calls out. "Grace Armstrong?"

The dot freezes for a second, then resumes its patrol.

"You that deputy who freed Fall's End?" Grace yells back from the big barn, realizing that the angle of her shot had already given away her position in the hayloft.

"Everybody knows who I am and no one can tell me my name," Rook mutters to her boots with the rather depressed feeling that all her priorities have gone wrong since the world started ending. Then she shouts back at Grace, "That was me!"

"Then I got no quarrel with you, deputy! Send out that murderin, thievin, grave-desecratin son of a bitch arsonist John Seed and walk away!"

Rook takes too long not answering that. Beside her, John shifts further into the hay. Not trusting her for a second.

A bullet plows into the dirt just beyond their toes, kicking up little clots of earth. A warning.

Rook huffs in a breath, inhaling the sweet scent of drying grass and musty tarps.

From her spot, Grace can snipe them both before they make it into the trees. Rook eyes the weedy edge of the barnyard, tempted to grab John and make a break for it anyway. She doesn't want to pick a fight. Especially not with Grace, who has always been a reliable source of pragmatism and bullets. A little too much of both right now, though, she thinks as a third shot hits to discourage them from running.

Grace must be pretty pissed to waste ammo like that. But then, John's people did burn down her home, kill her father, and leave her for dead. So that's personal.

"And the memorials," Rook reminds John. Somewhat reproachfully, because he does that to get people riled up and then they shoot at him.

He makes a weird face at her, gesturing sharply with his bound hands.

"I know what you did," Rook grumbles, then suffers a moment of uncertainty. Changes ripple out with every new cycle. And Burke is a pretty large fucking stone. "Will do. Would have done?" This is why she doesn't talk about future/past/future things. "I know you  _planned_ to do it. Or ... will plan to do it."

John looks extremely unimpressed by the time she trails off into silence. Then he slowly reaches up with his bound hands, and tugs down the gag.

"Deputy," he says with an air of theatrical deliberation, "As entertaining as your incoherence is, there will be plenty of time to struggle for words during confession."

Rook blinks, distracted. She really should have tied his hands behind his back. Next time, she promises herself. Next time she'll be more careful. Kidnapping someone and forcing them to release a previous kidnapped coworker in exchange for their most precious possession is more difficult than she anticipated. But maybe she spends too much time around people who make abduction seem like a casual, every day sort of thing.

Even Larry, although he wasn't really  _abducted_ so much as he transported himself willingly across interplanetary lines. Rook only got a hazy glimpse of Mars through the teleporter beam, but she saw enough to be pretty sure he made it. She hopes he's safe.

"Stop  _ignoring_ me," John says tightly from right next to her, grabbing her by the shoulder and simmering with the threat of messy violence that not even Grace can discourage.

"Taking prisoners is harder than your family makes it look," Rook tells him candidly, because she doesn't want to get pushed out into the line of fire and she wasn't listening to whatever it was he just said.

He looks smug, taking it as a compliment even if she hadn't quite meant it to be one. Grace sends down another bullet. She has no problems conversing entirely in gunfire.

"You should surrender, deputy," John advises unexpectedly, with a suspicious air of calm. "Give yourself, and this pathetic attempt at a ransom, up."

"She'll shoot you," Rook points out, because he's not talking his way out of that one.

"Oh," he grins, sharp and full of teeth, "I meant you should surrender to  _me_."

His eyes flick up, part the trees and to the sky, and Rook gets his plan in that instant.

Grace will keep her pinned down here, until the Chosen do their next flyby. At which point, no matter what happens, she's fucked. Their position is entirely visible from the air and John is, as Grace proves, pretty recognizable even from a distance. The Chosen will get rid of Grace, and Rook if she fights, and either way John gets his key. Without even breaking their deal, a technicality which must just delight his little lawyer's heart.

Damn. That's a good plan. Why can't she come up with plans like that?

Rook scuffs her boot into the ground, watching the little green dot of Grace's scope. All she has to work with is the hand gun, one clip of ammo, and whatever is in her pockets. but she'd still rather take her chances getting gunned down than captured. Grace ... probably feels the same way.

"No avoiding it," she says to the empty space at her side, forgotten for a moment that Boomer isn't right there.

She bats John's hands and his demanding questions away, digging in the pocket of her cargos for the sealed plastic of her bait bag.

"This will happen quickly," she warns John, because God knows he is easy to pick off on the ground.

"What-"

Whatever he's about to say gets lost as the bag opens and he recoils from the stench of raw meat.

Rook lobs a squishy handful up and over the hay bales, hearing it land with a wet splat. Boomer grumbles somewhere out there, too well-trained to go for it. She whistles him out of the area, into the undergrowth where he'll be safe.

Then she stuffs the bag back in her pocket, pulls her gun, and fires three shots in the direction of the road.

The sound cracks out, loud and echoing across the fields. Not silenced like Grace's rifle. There's an answering shot from the barn, right into the hay bales like it's making a point. And, faintly in the distance, Rook hears the alarmed shouts of a peggie patrol.

All her muscles tense.

John, observing this process, slides between anger and confusion as he realizes that she's not summoning the patrol to surrender.

"Deputy-"

A pair of wolves chase each other howling into the barnyard, snarling and fighting over the bait.

Rook springs forward, tearing away from John's shout of surprise.

She sprints into the tall weeds, throwing herself down a short incline and out of sight. A bullet goes  _pfft_ into the ground behind her, but she makes the trees before Grace can recover and find range.

She zig-zags through the bushes, weaving in and out of cover.

Shouts and snarls and gunshots ring out behind her. Rook grins. Between the wolves and the incoming peggies and Grace, they should all need a few minutes to sort themselves out.

Feet racing over dry ground, Rook runs high on adrenaline until she thinks of how much she  _likes_ Grace. Her feet slow to a jog, then a walk. Finally, she stops altogether. Blood tingles through her arms and legs, air pulling hard in her lungs. The physical buzz of out-running danger slow to subside.

(She misses having Grace at her back in the  _right_ way.)

Looking down at the gun in her hands, Rook realizes that she might also have just left John Seed to be torn apart by wolves. Which, while it does have a dark irony only Jacob could appreciate, wasn't really her intention. Should she be worried about this? Is is a thing that matter more to her future than the fact that she dropped her fishing rod somewhere by the Bradbury barn?

John slams into her back while she stands there, knocking her flat.

Caught off-guard, Rook plants face-down in the dust. The gun spinning from her hands into the bushes.

John yanks her arm up and back at a bad angle, pinning her down with body weight, clawing for the key. She jerks, boots scraping on the roots, trying to throw him off. But her right arm is trapped beneath her, and John wrenches her left farther back in a move that makes her fingertips go numb.

Boomer growls behind them.

John stops. She can hear his breath choke, sharp and angry. His fingers twitch, twisted up in the cord. Knees digging into her sides. He might even be able to get her before Boomer gets him.

Rook doesn't move. Just presses her cheek to the crumbly earth and lets John decide how this is going to go. His nails dig into the skin of her wrist, a painful drag of indecision.

Still caught beneath her body, her right hand brushes the hilt of her utility knife.

John leans down, speaks harsh and biting in her ear, "Soon, deputy, you will beg me to let you atone. And I will give you what you ask for, just as soon as you've  _bled_ for it."

He lets go, shoving himself off to one side and collapsing onto his elbows.

Twisting around, Rook scrambles away from him. Rocks and old pine needles dragging under her as she pulls herself a body-length out of reach. John watches her go, red-faced and breathing hard with exertion. Or just sheer fury. Either way, he doesn't make a move to pursue. Lucky that Boomer doesn't go for his throat. Lucky that Rook didn't.

She lets go of the knife's handle slowly. Sunshine dapples the ground around them, trees rustling softly in the breeze. Quiet, like moments after a fight always seem too quiet. Colors gone bright and edges crisp. The body processing that it won the struggle to live. Feeling like she'd just woken up from a sleep that was grey grey grey with ash and nuclear fallout.

Pulling in her legs, Rook sits up to rest her elbows on her knees. Watching John warily. He immediately dismisses her from notice and turns to glare at Boomer instead. Narrow and considering like he can skin things with his mind. Rook almost gets the knife out and ends him right there for even looking at her dog like that.

"I don't want to hurt you," she warns him.

"That would be  _so boring_ ," he snaps, seething. "But I don't believe you, deputy. You want quite a lot of things. Your friends, your freedom, the continuance of your sordid, sinful life." He leans back onto one elbow, kicking out his legs to lounge on the forest floor. "And what if I told you that you had to hurt me to make all those things yours?"

She rubs at her collarbone, uneasy. There's no tattoo there, not yet and not anymore. But she can't stop digging her own nails in where it used to be.

"I don't want to," she repeats, unhappy.

"Oh, deputy," John's anger releases him in what is almost a sigh, still there but somewhat appeased by watching her skin redden under her own nails, "We both know that just isn't true." His gaze flicks up to meet hers, cold and blue. "You have written your sins large across this valley, for everyone to read. And when they well up from your insides, when they are pulled from your skin with pain and remorse, then you will be forgiven."

But not before, Rook suspects.

She gets to her feet, drawing her collar up and pretending not to notice how his eyes linger on the scratches marking her wrist. She doesn't want him getting any artistic urges towards her in the near future. Or ever, really. His whole family responds to violence like a bad come-on, and she needs to stop giving it to them.

"Don't do that again," she orders, even though it's probably pointless.

"Or you'll drop my key in the lake?" John asks, still sprawled out on the ground and striving to sound bored. But he just sounds desperate and angry and afraid.

"No." Rook's lips move in a sort of helpless quirk because she has a really fucking bad idea. "I'll feed your key to a wolverine and let it loose in the woods." 

John's face goes through a funny little contortion, beard and bruises and all. He actually seems to take her seriously for a second. Just the one, but it happened. Rook feels almost like her old self again.

"It's been a long time since I've done anything fun," she adds with a straight face.

"I don't believe you," he says again, eyes flicking over her. "Even the unplumbed depths of your stupidity must have limits."

"Wouldn't be the worst thing I've done."

"Of course not," John recovers smoothly, standing with an unnecessary stretch that shows off the slim lines of his torso, "The worst thing you've done is try to arrest the Father."

And Rook abruptly remembers what being her old self got her. The faint sense of amusement drains right back out of her again. Leaves her tired and empty.

"You can go," she reminds him. "I'll leave your key somewhere safe once Hudson is free."

John just scoffs, making a show of brushing the dust off his clothes. Flashing a brittle, splintering smile. Pointless, pointless, thinks Rook. Vainly trying to rub the dirt out of her gloves.

This is going badly.

Emerging from the bushes, Boomer trots over to drop her gun at her feet with a hopeful wag of his tail. Rook gets another biscuit out of her pocket because he's a good boy. She really doesn't deserve him. Her one regret is that she can't tell Rae-Rae what an amazing dog he is.

Watching Boomer devour his snack, she has an idea. John's sins occupy the  _greed-lust-wrath_ trifecta. She can try distracting him from the last two with the first one. They should lie low until pursuit clears the area anyway.

Without a better plan, and keeping an eye out for patrols, Rook skirts the open road and leads them to a large drainage pipe where she remembers there being a stash of supplies. If her luck holds, both good and bad, there might even be a radio.

John follows behind her, transparently biding his time.

Rook is about three explosions, two more wolves, and one more near-miss away from throwing up her hands and abandoning this whole doomed endeavor.

* * *

Water sloshes in the bottom of a culvert, soaking into John's shoes and the hems of his pants. Garbage floats everywhere, rats running squeaking out as the deputy rummages through the shelves of someone else's dirty little rat-hole.

"Squirreling away guns for the winter?" John asks, inspecting the dirty mattress with a twist of his lip. "Or do your sticky fingers go everywhere, regardless of whose side you're on?"

She shrugs, pulling everything from dynamite to body-armor off the shelves and piling it on top of a crate. Irritated, John leans against the curve of the pipe, corrugated grooves pressing into his back. Since her last failed attempt to get rid of him, she's lapsed back into aggravating silence no matter how he jabs at her.

With a grunt of satisfaction, she emerges from the shelves with a pair of tin cans. Prying the lids off with the blade of her knife, she shoves one into John's hands. He looks down, wrinkling his nose at the tinny, brown-sugar odor of barbeque.

"How-" he makes the mistake of looking up and his question dies in disgust.

The deputy has the can up to her mouth, practically  _drinking_ baked beans. For breakfast. Unheated.

John has seen worse things in Jacob's camps. He has. Unfortunately, thinking of them now makes him even more nauseous. You can go a long time without eating, Jacob had told him, and still have the strength to overcome. John sets the food down on a crate.

The insufferable dog immediately starts nosing at it hopefully.

She lowers her can and says, "Boomer," in a warning tone.

Whining, it slinks back to her with begging eyes. The deputy obligingly acquires a can of spam and opens it for the dog to gobble up. Then she goes back to drinking her own meal.

John wishes Joseph were here so he could tell him what his precious arch-sinner is up to. Eating garbage in a gutter. Fitting, but disgusting to witness.

Some higher purpose  _must_ be at work because he refuses to believe that such an idiot could survive without divine intervention.

He eyes her, scuffed boots and straw still clinging to her back, eyes tired and shoulders slumped. The weight of all her sins, undoubtedly. John twists her wrists where they've gotten raw under the ropes. She doesn't talk much when the conversation isn't punctuated by violence or gunfire. People who are not talking are thinking. Unlikely as that might seem in the deputy's case. John does not want her thinking about what else his key might be worth.

The Father had entrusted it to him, told him that he would hold it until the time was right. If John loses it, then what if Joseph realizes that he's unworthy of the responsibility? He might lock John out for good, that's too entirely possible. And what if Joseph rejects, abandons,  _hates_ him? John needs his brother to believe in him, he doesn't know how to be good on his own.

A dirty hand in a battered glove waves something in front of his face. He finds the deputy staring at him expectantly, holding up a radio.

John takes a second to drag himself out of his own head.

Then he takes even longer tuning to the right frequency. Playing for time to think. The deputy keeps the handheld steady, unspeaking. John bites down his urge to snap at her. That key is everything, More than his life, more than one sinner's atonement. But he has no reason to believe she won't kill him the second he finishes making this call. John can't die until Joseph tells him that his salvation is assured.

"Liars don't deserve Eden," the deputy reminds him when he reaches the Eden's Gate channel.

She clicks the button on, holding the radio up to his mouth.

John puts his hands over the speaker and shakes his head at her until she releases it.

"What exactly am I supposed to say?" he demands.

"Free Hudson."

John scoffs, "Snappy hashtag, deputy, but it's a bit lacking in detail for a ransom note. What specifically do you want to happen here?"

She just blinks slowly, eyes drifting away from him to stare at nothing and he hates how she always seems to be looking elsewhere. What could possibly be more important right now? Anger claws just under his skin, too-tight and he wants to rip it off.

After a long and painful atonement, he might just send the deputy to Faith. Let her mind give way and her eyes fog up with Bliss. Half the time she acts like an Angel already: mute and uncaring.

He  _hates_ silence. It's too full of its own potential to be broken.

John presses his fingers down over hers, squeezing her hand into the button until she startles and  _sees_ him again,

"This is John," he snaps into the radio, to all patrols in range. "I have new orders."

His people, at least, are properly overjoyed to hear from him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story also inspired by how hard it is to fish when the game really wants you to you know, play actual quests.


	3. the wide and open road

Now that her plan is coming together, Rook feels an even stronger urge to ditch the whole half-assed thing.

Sitting on a battered mattress in a dead-end branch of the drainage pipe, she takes longer than usual to catalogue her resources before setting out. Trash floats in the mucky water around her boots, more junk heaped up around her as she sorts it into piles of  _yeah / no_ based on what looks useful and what fits in her pockets.

The flashlight points up at the ceiling: world's laziest lamp. Motes of dust drift through the beam, exaggerated shadows lurking below every surface. Boomer and John are half-illuminated shapes by the T-junction of the tunnel, waiting for her with vastly different degrees of patience.

Their path to town should be clear by now, John's orders pulling his people back, but Rook lets the clock run down. First they need water, then they need to clean various scrapes to prevent infection, then she needs to go through the available supplies. Putting off the mission with one little excuse after another.

Isn't this exactly what she wasn't going to do anymore? Get involved, rescue people. The radio lies dark and silent at her side. Switched off because she doesn't want to hear anyone calling for help.

Burke had been an accident. But rescuing Joey will be nothing short of premeditated. Her stomach knots with reluctance. It feels so futile and useless.  _Rook_ is futile and useless.

But Hudson could use a friend right now. She has a hard time flipping the script from ' _insane cult takes hostages, ruins lives_ ' to ' _insane cult ruins lives, saves humanity._ ' Which is probably John's fault. Rook eyes the back of his head as he peers around the corner to the exit. For all his talk, she hasn't heard him explain the Project beyond "because Joseph said so." Hudson deserves a break from that as much as Rook does.

Sighing, she pitches an empty can at the wall, watches it bounce off with a  _clang_ and sink into the water.

"What do you even know about the future?" she asks John, unthinking.

There's a beat of ominous silence.

That was rhetorical. That was  _rhetorical_ , and Rook digs hastily into one of the piles beside her. She'd forgotten she hadn't taped his mouth shut yet and she didn't actually want a lecture on-

"The great Collapse," John begins, words rolling out with prepackaged flair, "Will come with a shuddering and quaking of the earth, a shout of thunder and a dizzying light. The Father has foreseen this, and trusted me to save this valley from destruction."

Rook fumbles through the salvage. She can feel him inspecting her for weaknesses, for a way to tunnel in and prize her apart. And Rook is critically weak here. Too early for the bombs to fall, she reassures herself. Too early.

But it doesn't help.

"The righteous will be held safe within the loving embrace of the Project." John warms to his theme, wanting to pace and gesticulate but hampered by the ropes and the confines of the pipe. "But those stubborn sinners who refuse our aid, who thrust away our giving hands and reject our generous offerings, will be shut out to the torment of unquenchable fire."

Phantom pains prickle hot/cold over her skin. The dull roar of wind and the kick of the magnopulsar in her hands-

The walls curl in and she can't see the sky. She doesn't know it's not red with fire.

( _It's so dark down here_.)

It's not safe.

Her fingers close over the rough texture of kevlar, the body-armor buried at the bottom of her junk pile.

John is still talking, something about purging that sounds more like a juice cleanse than a nuclear strike. She can't hear him over the pound of blood in her ears. But she can see him, too-real and bruised at the edges of the light.

Grabbing the body-armor, Rook stands in a graceless surge of impulse, water dragging at her ankles. She wades over to John and drops the vest over his head.

It gets stuck half-way down his shoulders, of course, because his hands are still tied together.

The sermon, which had gotten emphatically louder as she got close, cuts off in surprise.

There's a short silence.

Water drips from the roof of the pipe, ripples around their feet. A car rumbles over the road outside. Boomer, oblivious to human awkwardness, noses at Rook's legs. Her hands find his ears automatically, scritching them out of habit.

John raises his hands, explores the outside of the armor with prodding, tattooed fingers. He's headless in the shadows, top half hidden inside kevlar.

"I'm curious," he finally says, muffled and deceptively conversational, "What brought on this latest attempt to smother me in a vest?"

She drags it off his head, frustrated with herself. With everything. His hair fluffs up, his expression rumpled and pissy. Humanized.  _Fuck_ , how many times has he died and never even known?

"You need this," Rook tries to explain, holding tight to the kevlar because the alternative is punching him until he realizes just how short his future will be. "You're going to."

Her shoulders hunch, gaze averted from his living, breathing body.

The smell of waterlogged cardboard permeates the air, but it's not enough to keep the ash off her tongue, the smoke stinging her throat.

"Touched as I am by your generosity with other people's things," John speaks when she can't say anything more, his every word precise and sharp-cut with sarcasm, "I find myself ... baffled by your motives."

Stupidly, Rook blurts out, "I saw you die."

John's eyebrows go all the way up, then scrunch down in sharp confusion.

_no no, shut up_

"No. Just - hold still." She grabs him by the wrists, ignoring the reflexive way he pulls back. She hesitates before cutting off the ropes, points the knife at him, "Try anything-"

"And you dispose of my key in a creative and horrifying fashion." He waves the threat off, remarkably calm for someone who tried to break her arm just hours ago. Refusing to be sidetracked. "What do you mean, you saw me die?"

Rook just shakes her head.

It won't happen because she's going fishing. Tomorrow, she's going.

She jerks the knife through the ropes with an angry little yank. Fuck, this is dumb. This is going to be what kills her. ( _ends the loop?_ ) She'll die and she'll deserve it.

But John does nothing. Just takes the vest from her and shimmies into it without a word. Wrapping himself in kevlar but still vulnerable in the way his eyes stick to her, a deep crease between his brows.

Until it all disappears behind a fake smile, and he holds his hands out for the ropes again.

Rook backs up a step, wary. Knife in one hand, roll of duct-tape in the other. John's smile deepens to genuine, a hint of teeth. A challenge.

The fuck is he playing at now? This is his chance to get free. He can't be that scared of Boomer. Or this committed to imitating Joseph.

She wraps his hands quickly, reluctant to get close. Lets him keep them in front, since there's no telling what will try to ambush between here and Fall's End. The tape rips off, loud in the water-washed quiet.

John studies her work for a second, flexing his fingers and wrists.

"So," he looks back up with a determined gleam in his eyes, "What  _did_ you mean-"

Rook pushes past him to the main tunnel hurriedly.

She orders over her shoulder, "Boomer, heel."

Boomer, whose understanding of directions extends to  _stay / go_ and  _scout / attack_ , barks enthusiastically and promptly races right past her. He splashes into the creek outside, a diamond spray of water in the sun.

Rook shakes her head. There might be some books on dog training up in Jacob's territory. She should pick one up, teach Boomer a few tricks.

Then again, she doubts Jacob teaches his wolves anything so harmless as balancing balls on their noses. Grenades, maybe. Jacob strikes her as the sort of man who would strap a belt of grenades to a wolf, pull all the pins and send it running into enemy lines.

More effective than using bait to attract whatever was in the area and hoping it went for everyone else first.

(Damn, she hopes Grace is alright. And very far away.)

Making little noises of disgust as they wade through the dirty pipe, John follows her out. The tenor of his voice suggests that he's getting perverse pleasure out of being revolted by every little thing, so Rook doesn't worry about it. A little grime won't kill him. And she'd rather hear him complain than ask questions.

She pauses at the mouth of the pipe, looking around. The water ripples, a light breeze ruffling the surface until it sparkles. Reeds sway together on the banks, the road above them flat and empty. Asphalt baking in the sun. Everything quiet, quiet, quiet.

Behind her, John exhales in impatience and shoves at her shoulder.

Slowly, Rook reaches back and gets a hand on his shoulder, kevlar and the fine fabric of his shirt shifting underneath her palm. She pushes down until they're both crouched low in the shadows.

Boomer bounces stiff-legged in the creek, snapping at frogs. Nothing out here is trying to hurt them. But they're just down the road from Larry's place. Rook can't shake the feeling that something ought to be on fire. Or exploding. Or covered in hornets.

She draws the gun, creeps a short distance into the reeds. The wind blows gently past. The long shadow of a Chosen plan falls over her, so much bigger on the ground than it looks up in the sky. Rook holds her breath until it's gone, then waves at John to join her.

He falls in line without comment, blatantly studying her in a way that makes her uncomfortable. Like he's already murdered her, and is planning the autopsy.

She made it weird, opening her mouth about seeing him die. That was a weird thing to say. It's not just Joseph who makes people uncomfortable with that kind of talk.

For the sake of her sanity, Rook keeps moving.

Dry grass and dirt crumble under her boots as she leads them across the fields to Fall's End. Their feet leave faint tracks of drying mud, but she shrugs off her worries about making a trail. They're so close to the finish line. She just wants it over with. Win of lose, it doesn't really matter.

The future is a mushroom cloud either way.

* * *

John spots the Angels by chance, a flutter of white rags on the far side of a field catching his eye and pulling him out of his speculations.

Instantly recognizing their rambling silhouettes for what they are, he coils tight and still into himself. Glancing sideways at the deputy where she's paused underneath the pines. Busy picking a burr out of her dog's hind-foot, she mutters a low stream of nonsense to the animal, oblivious to anything else.

John bites his tongue. Tempted, so tempted. He looks back at the Angels. Only two of them, but their presence gives him an edge.

His sister's toys are mindless and brutal when threatened. He could take the deputy by surprise, let the Angels handle the dog. He's being presented such a perfect opportunity to get out of this, is it providence or temptation? Liars might not deserve Eden, but all he had promised was that her friend would reach Fall's End unharmed. A vague agreement, full of holes to fill. His fingers crook, hungry for violence and scratching at the tape.

A word from him, and that ends. The renewed sense of control soothes some of his simmering resentments, clears his head. John licks blood inside his mouth, and considers the deputy's unprotected back. Indulges a moment's fantasy of slipping his arms over her head, squeezing her neck until she writhes for air against him.

Patiently, he has endured this test and obediently has he resisted throttling her. Despite all her provocations and her attempts to leave him behind. Joseph will be proud of him.

John settles in place, leaning back against the slender trunk of a pine. Mouth dragged tight with frustration. The deputy is hiding  _something_. He can tell. He's always been good at recognizing a liar. She might need to be pulled apart, might need someone to twist in deep and painful, but whatever secrets she's concealed will come out with the proper encouragement. John looks forward to finding the right incentive with vicious anticipation. He's good at that too.

She finishes working the burr out of the dog's paw, flicks it away. His key glinting at her wrist. So close, and the Angels are so far away.

She knows things she shouldn't. He's going to know them too.

His fingers smooth down the vest thoughtfully.

Perhaps, if he feels like it, he will keep her around after her atonement. Pinned down in his bunker, unable to wriggle out of explaining, that's a nice thought. When she lays her innermost self bare before him, he'll know what to do with her.

Finished tending her pet, the deputy finally remembers he exists. He straightens up to attention when her eyes seek him out. Still frustrated by her lack of expression, but reading new dimensions of significance in the way she beckons him to follow. New qualities in her silence as she leads them towards Fall's End.

John glances over his shoulder, across the field.

The Angels are gone.

Damned if he'll give Faith the satisfaction of rescuing him in his own territory anyway.

John gets back to obsessing over what he'll ask the deputy first.

_I saw you die_.

He's owed an answer for that.

* * *

As they near Fall's End, the peggie patrols vanish. Planes still fly overhead, but otherwise John's forces seem to be obeying his orders about stopping the search. Rook doesn't consider what will happen after the hostage exchange. She just wants it done.

So she hurries along the dirt roads and the ditches, taking as many chances as she dares with John at her heels.

A little time off, and she'd forgotten how tenacious the Seeds could get.

Even John, the most socialized, is a fucking pitbull: snap and bite and cling. Letting himself be dragged across the valley because he's unwilling to let go. She'll have to pry his teeth out of her flesh one at a time before he gives up. Or he'll take a chunk of her with him.

The key is a guilty tap of metal at her wrist.

"I am not crawling into town on my knees," John complains behind her.

Nobody asked him to, Rook thinks, lying flat in the grass and surveying the path up to the town's water tower. That bad moment in the pipe still has her rattled, setting her nerves jumping at nothing. But John doesn't have to be here. Nothing's stopping him from leaving. (Except maybe the fear of Grace.)

But the angry rustle of weeds as he crouches beside her suggests that he's not going anywhere soon.

She can't fault him for doubting her capabilities either. Her track record for getting people where she wants them to go is not good. Then again, she can't be blamed for Joseph. Worlds will  _end_ before that man sees the inside of a jail cell. Literally, the world has ended multiple times. (And how long can Rook even go before someone takes her down with a Bliss bullet and she fulfills her destiny of being tied up and hauled off once again?) It's just the natural order of things.

"Deputy," John persists, unhappy and insistent at her shoulder. "I know you hear me. And while I appreciate your willingness to get down on your belly, my people will be releasing Hudson in less than an hour. I don't intend to be late because of your unnatural desire to hug the dirt."

Rook snorts, raking her fingers through dust and grass-roots.  _She's_ not the one with unnatural desires. John Seed has a dirty, dirty mind and the only river he's washing it in is denial.

She wants to be anywhere, with anyone, doing anything else. (But there's nowhere to go.)

" _Deputy_."

"I miss fishing."

"What?" John sputters at that. Then he recovers and grabs at her, plucking at the back of her shirt even if his hands are too mummified by tape to get a good grip. "Are you - don't tell me you've been  _fishing_ all this time? After unleashing the Marshal on my valley!"

"You don't like Burke?" Rook asks, squinting over at him in surprise.

She would have thought he enjoyed the mayhem.

"Do I like Burke?" John repeats slowly, frozen in outrage except the slow curl of his fingers into her clothes. "Do I  _like_ having my work disrupted, my property destroyed, my - my sleep disturbed by the radio at all hours?"

"How annoying," Rook agrees in monotone.

John scowls, giving her a slight shake. Rook, planted firmly in the ground, doesn't exactly cooperate.

"Make no mistake," his voice grates dangerously, beard quivering, "I know exactly who loosed that pest upon my house. And once you have confessed, you will do your utmost to repair the damages he's done. Even if it kills you."

_Especially_ if it kills her, Rook predicts.

Shrugging him off, she crawls up the dirt path to the water tower. Her spirits brightening in the face of John's impotent fury. Of all the ways she's wreaked havoc upon the Project without really trying, freeing Burke might be her new favorite.

"And you said wrath was  _my_ sin," she can't resist needling John.

He checks for a second, then scrambles after her.

"Rest assured, deputy," he promises, his brief flash of outrage settling into something harder and more dangerous, "No sin of yours will go unexamined. Your confession will be thorough, and devastatingly complete. I will drag truth from you, until you are overjoyed to answer  _every_ question. Until you thank me for the privilege of atonement."

Rook pulls a face at Boomer where John can't see. He pants happily at her, then scampers ahead to chase rabbits. No one is threatening  _him_ with unconventional and inappropriate baptismal rites.

Keep going for Hudson, her better (stupider) half urges. It will all be over in a few hours. And in a few months, it will  _really_ be over. And then it will all start again.

The water tower gleams bright in the sun, a beacon ahead. Rook itches where sweat collects inside her gloves. She's such a fuck-up. After how many apocalypses, she still hasn't learned to walk away.

* * *

Getting John up the ladder into the water tower turns out to be painless.

He tries to talk her into cutting his hands loose, of course, a thing she is not dumb enough to do. And then he just sighs and starts hauling himself up with both hands, swearing every time he slips.

Rook is surprised.

She'd planned to leave him with Boomer, tied up in the little nook behind the Testy Festy sign where no one could see. Instead, she gets the dubious pleasure of climbing up the ladder behind him. Eyes firmly on her own hands and a filthy joke Adelaide Drubman made about his ass burning in her ears.

Kindly, he does not kick her in the teeth when she makes it to the top. Which is just plain  _suspicious_. Rook eyes him for a minute, where he's slouched down against the reservoir tank. Hogging what little shade there is to be had with the sun directly overhead. He's not looking at her, head tipped back and eyes searching the sky.

He looks exhausted, pale and bruised. A man who crashed his plane, skipped breakfast, and got dragged miles across country in poor company. He looks like he wants a decent night's sleep.

That makes two of them, Rook thinks, and drags herself onto the catwalk.

She flattens out, hissing as her forearms hit the hot metal surface. But there's no cover up here, just thin guard rails, and she'd rather scorch her elbows than get shot.

Pulling herself along in a scout's creep, she bypasses John (ignoring the way he scoffs at her undignified crawl) and inches around the water tank until she has a vantage on the whole town.

Main street lies deserted at this time of day, everyone taking shelter from the heat. Rook glances longingly at the Spread Eagle, with its beer and air conditioned insides, then lets it go with a sigh. There's no sign of life out here, but the church doors are propped open and she can see a fan turning just inside. Someone's hopeful attempt to encourage air flow.

Already baking, Rook keeps as low a profile as she can while being jammed onto this narrow ledge. Making herself the smallest possible target.

John shuffles up beside her on his elbows, finally having the good sense to understand that sticking his neck out here will get him shot.

They don't speak, watching the road together. Nothing to do but wait and see if his people come through on their end of the bargain.

The heat quickly becomes unbearable, a head-aching glare of sunlight and thirst.

Rook wishes she brought water.

Beside her, John remains uncharacteristically quiet. Subdued by the heat, but still subjecting her to the occasional bought of intense staring. She doesn't know what's shifted inside his head, but she doesn't like the way he's started looking at her.

At least he's not talking. Biding his time, probably. She tucks the arm with the key under her.

So much for staying off the cult's radar.

Noon comes and goes, church bells ringing the hour. Both John and Rook are utterly miserable at this point, breaths puffing out shallow and pushed as far from each other's body heat as the narrow catwalk will allow. The only relief in the light breeze, ruffling the back of her shirt and messing with his sweaty hair. Stretching, Rook spreads her fingers to the thin bar of shade below the guard rails. Scratching a nail against the flaking paint, she thinks about heat stroke and how stupid it would be to collapse from it.

All kinds of collapses, all of them bad.

The sun seeps into Fall's End, making the shade go sparkly black in her vision, drawing red lines of past-future horrors in the cracked pavement. The sky-devouring light, drooling fire and spitting down ash. Vomiting out the charred bones of the old world.

Rook can't stand up to it anymore.

She drops her head to rest on sun-hot metal, closes her eyes, and doesn't move until the earth stops moving itself around her.

John, with his sixth sense for weakness, chooses this moment to break the peace.

"What did you see when you saw me die?"

Rook twists to look over, still resting her cheek on metal, and has a vision of him with blood sheeting down his throat, bubbling wet from his lungs, head bursting into watermelon fragments.

She reaches out, presses her hand flat to his face and lets him be real. His beard prickling her wrist below the glove. His skin tacky with sweat and dust in the summer heat. The rise-fall of his breath. For a minute, she lets herself be human too.

"It's okay, John," she says to the fear in his eyes. "You'll live."

Trapped in Schrodinger's lockbox, unable to escape. Alive and dead forever.

Her hand drops.

John makes a breathy, surprised noise like he's having an epiphany. Tipping forward into the the sudden absence of contact. A little quiver running right through him as he catches himself. Wide eyes staring into her, wanting to find something so desperately that Rook almost wants to be found, to be whatever could make anyone look like that.

She feels sick at how easy he is to talk to.

That's a slippery slope to disaster. She turns away, lets his expression reveal too much to no one. Stares at the road out of town until it wavers like glass under water. John turning into a shadow of himself beside her.

The real world died the first time. None of this exists. None of it makes a difference.

"What's your name?" John demands, unexpectedly recovering all of his energy. "What is it really."

She doesn't answer.

Can't answer because today is one of those days she doesn't know.

The haze that sometimes comes over her memories probably has something to do with brainwashing and hallucinogenic drugs she's been subjected to since coming here. Or maybe she's just taken one too many shovels to the head.

(One too many magnopulsars scrambling her brain.)

John crowds close, undeterred by the lack of response. Just shy of pressing his hip against hers.

"You're going to confess," he tells her, bright and hard with confidence. Radiating too much heat. "Say yes, and I will help you, deputy. You really are meant to be here."

Rook opens her mouth to deny it - and the rumble of a convoy coming down the road makes her snap it shut again.

She turns away to watch the trucks roll to a stop just beyond the church, ignoring John's frustrated huff. He remains too close, half-propped up on his elbows and that much bigger in her peripheral. Trying to drag her attention back.

But Rook only has eyes for the peggies piling out of their trucks, only hears the sudden watchful silence of the town as tense faces appear and disappear in windows, replaced by guns and closed curtains.

The peggies take position behind their vehicles, blocking the road. Squinting, Rook picks over the number of assault rifles on display. (So many unregistered firearms, they could bury the whole Project in fines.) The black, flowering cross of Eden's Gate stands out starkly on all the doors. A pair of mounted guns swivel in the beds of the trucks on the flanks.

Rook breathes slow and deep, readying herself for action. Her gun secure in one hand, John's key tied to the other. Boomer growling down below.

They bring Hudson out with a bag over her head, deputy's badge winking silver on the front of her dirty green uniform. Hands tied behind her back, but she's standing on her own feet.

Rook taps down the impulse to call out.

The bag is pulled off, a shove from a peggie with a gun sending Hudson stumbling out into no-man's land.

She doesn't need the encouragement, though, regaining her balance and heading for the church with quick, shaky steps.

Rook watches over her from the water tower, flat on her belly with John Seed stretched out beside her. She keeps her aim steady on the peggie line, primed for any sign of treachery.

But Hudson makes it to the fence, then to the doors, then she's inside the church and  _safe safe safe_. Rook makes a shaken sound that she'll deny later, and drops her head down to thunk against the metal. She doesn't get to see people come home often.

( _it matters somehow, it still matters_ )

The peggies linger on the road, doubtless waiting for John's confirmation that they're done.

John himself is staring at Rook, bright and expectant. A vibrating energy revving somewhere inside him, a renewed flush of excitement now that the waiting is over. Twitching with barely contained speeches.

He makes her so very tired.

Shuffling sideways to face him, she unwinds the key from her wrist, drops it between them. It clatters loudly on the catwalk. John puts his hands, still duct-taped together, down over it with a protective, possessive grasp. His eyes are blue and sweet when he smiles at her.

"Thank you, Deputy."

He rolls to his feet, clutching the key to his chest.

And kicks her off the tower.

Rook bangs her head as she slides right under the safety rails, floundering over the side and falling down down down.

The world pinwheels, air rushing out of her lungs.

She lands with a crunch in the bushes, just shy of cracking her skull on the rocks. Broken branches gouge into her, scraping off red-blue lines of skin. Slivers digging into her unprotected arms.

The black cut-out silhouette of John leans out over the edge high above, but Rook can't see his face, the sky is so blue.

She makes a faint, protesting noise at the Testy Festy sign. Ribs aching where she got kicked.

Really, really should have seen that coming.

"Hey!" John shouts, waving his arms at the cultists on the road, "Up here!"

There's a brief pause as the rest of the world processes his extremely well-advertised voice and appearance.

Peggies burst into action, running to retrieve him, even as a barrage of gunfire  _pings_ into the water tower in an attempt to cut him down.

Boomer whines, jarring Rook out of her daze. Stumbling to her feet, she hisses. Whole body twinging in pain. Gun lost in the rocks. She staggers for the trees, gaining balance and speed as she goes. Bruised but not down.

A stray bullet clips the dirt at her heels. Another splinters the side of a shed as she ducks past, high-powered carbine rounds. Time to get the hell away from the shootout.

She shouts for Boomer over the crack of gunfire, sends him flying ahead.

Something, probably one of the trucks, explodes. Rook doesn't look back, just lets the downhill slope build momentum as her feet race down the dirt path.

No one notices her. The peggies are too focused on rescuing their herald, who just made himself a giant target on top of a giant tower. And the resistance sounds like they're doing their damndest to fill John Seed full of lead before he gets away.

Good for them, Rook thinks sourly. Fuck John. If he dies again, it'll be his own damn fault.

Boomer yaps, high and angry, and Rook veers off the path, slithering in the dust as she slides behind a tree. Catches herself on the trunk and freeze still, panting. Heart rabbiting quick as she hears the tell-tale crackle of peggies in the brush.

She risks poking her head out, catches one glimpse of red hats and armbands in the tree-line and promptly tucks herself back out of sight.

Jacob's hunters.  _Fucking hell._ She'd known those search parties were too organized.

Big brother must have stepped in sometime after John went missing. Risking her head, Rook gets a better look at the line of Chosen sweeping the trees. Methodical and unconcerned with the brawl in the town ahead. A net to catch anyone trying to escape.

Whatever Jacob has planned, Rook should not be here when it goes down.

( _only you can prevent forest fires_ )

She creeps from tree to tree, working her way diagonally towards the main road.

The peggie on that end moves a little slower than the others, pausing every so often to watch for cars. His long coat swishes as he turns, prodding at the sparse bushes with his rifle.

Behind a tree, Rook tenses, getting ready to jump him.

Until the front of his face blows outward with a sniper's bullet.

Watching the body hit the ground with a thump, Rook blinks in surprise. Hands still raised to twist his head around.

A dancing green light flicks across the corpse, confirming the kill.

Rook takes a chance. Sliding past the dead peggie and into the open, she salutes the general area in gratitude to Grace. Then she hunkers down in the thickest bushes she can find.

The Chosen line moves on towards the town, not yet noticing they've lost their leftmost edge.

A minute later, Grace materializes out of the trees.

Rook straightens up and goes to meet her, both of them keeping a wary eye out in the direction the hunters disappeared.

"Deputy," Grace says, rifle held at ready across her chest. Face set in a stony expression. "You're lucky Dutch likes you. And I respect Dutch."

Rook doesn't say anything, fidgeting awkwardly with a loose string on her gloves. She wants to call Boomer in for support, wants to clap Grace on the shoulder and apologize. Wants - but those are impulses of a different time.

"Where'd you leave John Seed?" Grace demands, unconcerned with anything else. "Peggie radio chatter puts him in the area, but not with you."

Rook waves a hand over her shoulder at the chaos rocking Fall's End.

Grace doesn't bother saying anything else, just takes off with a stiff nod.

"Thanks," Rook mutters after her.

(they're not friends)

She stares back towards town, exhaustion slapping down on her like a heavy hand. She should go back. Her plan brought the peggies there, her stupid interference opening the door to Jacob. She should help.

But Rook being helpful generally ends badly for all concerned.

A line of trucks and vans barrels down the road toward Fall's End, blaring horns and waving the state flag.

Rook catches a doppler wave of Burke shouting orders from the lead car.

"Nope," she says to Boomer. "Fuck that. Fuck that sideways, boy, we are  _out_."

She's liberated the town half a dozen times now, and it is not a fucking secure location for a resistance outpost. A lot of people are attached to their home turf, but that sentiment is exactly the sort of weakness Jacob is currently exploiting with planes, RPGs, and possibly his brother's fucking Revelator. Everyone in town knew the risks, and chose to stay.

Rook grinds her heel into the ground.

_Shit._

A herald marching into another herald's territory is new. She does not want to stick around to find out whether John and his brother join forces, or have an epic family meltdown that leaves everyone else scattered in pieces around them and the church up in flames.

The angry pound of mini-guns and the clap of a grenade echo across the fields.

Hudson is out in that. Grace and the town, too. Resistance and cult blowing each other to hell.

( _when you gonna learn to walk away, rookie_ )

Rook takes a gun off the dead peggie, and leaves Fall's End. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not pictured: Jacob quietly having an aneurysm as John's antics cost him a headshot on the deputy.  
> Also not pictured: Joseph's 'I'm so disappointed in you' face.


	4. heed the words

A spring in his step, John strides down the central road of Fall's End, scattering the faithful in his wake.

"Herald," the medic trailing behind him protests, "Herald John, please sit down. You need to rehydrate and rest-"

John ignores him. He knows his body's limits intimately, and a smattering of bruises with a touch of sun won't be his doing. Besides, he's not about to sit idly by while Jacob makes a hash of things. More than he already has, that is. For which John forgives him. Of course he does.

Flush with excitement, John feels more than ready to forgive  _anything_ right now.

The town smokes, houses smoldering with embers. Empty bullet casings litter the streets and pockmark craters scar the pavement. Chosen toil industriously, dousing fires and dragging out the occasional body to join the line of corpses in the road. The sinners and the saints lying together.

Touching his fingers to his chest, John presses the bruises beneath his half-buttoned shirt. He can't quite believe it. Loves the physical proof. He'd been shot three times and the armor had taken them all.

_Don't worry, John._

Desire knifes through him. He's got so much work to do.

Fall's End has been taken for the Project, and more importantly, his key is once again hanging around his neck. Returned to its rightful place.

He slows down to admire the rubble, enjoying the afternoon destruction. He always hated this place, its small-town hypocrisy and judgmental whispers. Neighborly gossips all-too eager to turn on each other at a word. Americana and grime.

_He_ should have been the one to cleanse it of sin, but John comforts himself with how instrumental he's been in the whole process.

His Revelator sits crookedly in the middle of town, a jeep rammed into its side and steam rising from the engine. John  _tsks_ slightly at the sight. His improved tank hadn't been ready to take the roads just yet. But Jacob must push all things to the limits of their useful capability. Still, John is proud to say that the Revelator had done an admirable job of squashing the Marshal's attempted heroics.

He'd had an excellent view of that from the water tower.

Burke's defeat had been exquisitely satisfying. Sadly, the man himself had escaped. But he'd gone with his tail between his legs and that's a good day's work in John's book. Let the Marshal stew in his humiliation a while. It'll draw his sins to the surface, if they aren't there already, and make his confession pass quicker.

John whistles as he searches for his brother. Jacob must be around somewhere, being disgustingly efficient and micromanaging the clean-up.

Sure enough, he finds him in what remains of the mechanic's garage. The roof has been half-blasted off, but the remaining three walls seem stable enough for John to risk walking under them. Soldiers bustle about the improvised command center with rifles and radios, conferring in hushed tones.

John quietly enjoys the way they part to let him through, opening a path to where Jacob leans against the far wall, listening to reports from a handful of his lieutenants.

The persistent medic follows John inside, which says something for his courage if not his intelligence.

His voice becomes increasingly strained as it becomes clear to all that he has failed his mission to keep John in the medical tent, stuttering, "Herald,  _please._ "

Whirling around, John snatches the covered cup that man has been trying to foist upon him and sucks a long, noisy drink out of the straw.

"There," he smiles, sweetened by the cloying taste of apple juice, "I'm hydrating. Your purpose is fulfilled, run along now, chop chop."

Then he dismisses the irritant from notice and makes a beeline for his brother.

Jacob greets his approach with a dark, disapproving frown, but he obligingly waves his crowd away.

They disperse with varying degrees of speed. John takes note of those who look a little  _too_ curious on their way out. He has a fantastic memory for faces. No sin, no matter how small, gets past him.

But the potential disrespect of his brother's men is a minor concern right now.

John hops up on the table beside Jacob, sitting directly on top of a very important looking map and various papers of strategic significance. They crinkle as he shifts into a comfortable position.

Jacob's eyes narrow in a glare to which John is fantastically immune.

They regard each other without speaking for a moment, a silent confirmation that they are both whole, both unharmed.

But Jacob lets the silence hang, making it pointed with his size and scowl and how he leans back against the wall with folded arms. A tiger pit waiting for someone foolish enough to jump in.

Fortunately, John has his own tricks.

His plastic straw makes an especially irritating scraping sound as he twirls in up and down through the hole in the cup's lid.

The scowl pinches at the edges, but Jacob doesn't otherwise react.

John's too excited, too pumped up with the elation of discovery and cheating death to hold his words in for long. Why should he try to best Jacob at a waiting game anyway? Besides the general principle of the thing. He's not as good at standing on principle as he should be.

He opens his mouth-

And gets immediately, predictably, interrupted.

"Twenty hours," Jacob grates out, dropping his arms but not his frown, "Twenty hours wasted on a manhunt throughout your entire region. Your people were so paralyzed without you, I had to come down in person. And that was before your ridiculous radio call."

"I'm grateful you came all this way," John smiles and means it, "But as you can see, it was unnecessary."

"Unnecessary," repeats Jacob, testing the word and finding it lacking. His hands close on the corner of table, crushing some unwanted emotion until it emerges as gravel in his voice. "Unnecessary as how you deliberately made yourself a target on top of the water tower and  _refused to come down_."

John tosses aside his cup, a sticky spill of sugar and apples, and overflows with enthusiasm.

"I was protected," he explains, can't help the excitement bleeding out. He wasn't going to speak of this yet, but suddenly it's all he can do not to leap out of himself with how much he can't contain.

He throws his arms out, displaying the bruises through his open shirt.

Each impact is an ache, a kick in the chest that had taken his breath and knocked him back. Each one a mark that proves his worthiness as he got up again.

"No bullet pierced the armor, Jacob, no bullet pierced  _me_ and I-" his breath stumbles out in a half-laugh, "I was _protected_."

Jacob's face changes as he speaks, taking in the full strength of John's conviction. It sets into the stone-blank expression that he wears when Joseph talks too long about the Voice. Jaw clamped shut on something too dangerous to say. But John knows this about his brother. They don't talk about his doubts.

"It was a test, Jacob," he insists, reining himself in a little. Using his brother's language when Jacob can't bring himself to speak his. "My test. And I came through it whole and unharmed. Stronger for what I've learned, you'll see."

Jacob holds his gaze for a long moment, beard bristling as he struggles within himself. Then he pushes off the wall, fists clenched until the knuckles whiten, and stalks out.

Undiscouraged, John hops off the table and follows. Touching two fingers to the key: not just given but  _earned_. His now, undisputed.

Stopping just outside the garage, Jacob at least doesn't try to leave him behind. But he squints into the middle distance, pretending to inspect the field of his triumph when John  _knows_ he's fighting not to let anger rule him. Even though he feels as though _he's_ flying apart at the seams, John gives him a moment.

Smoke drifts around them, a red haze over the sun.

Down the street, the Spread Eagle burns merrily. Despite the best efforts of a Chosen fire brigade, who can't seem to figure out that the timbers of the bar have been breathing in alcohol vapor for  _years_. It's a minor miracle that the whole place hadn't spontaneously combusted the last time someone lit a cigarette.

A shame, though, John reflects as he slowly grows more subdued. The bar was a den of sin, of course, but it had possessed its charms. After all, he always knew where to look for the heathens. Bathing in the futility of their sins, marinading in hopelessness until they were ready to be retrieved and washed clean and dried out.

He looks away and sighs. The rest of the fires might be extinguished, but Fall's End is done. Whatever the exact day of the Collapse, this town has already been blasted down to its foundations. He doubts anyone will bother rebuilding.

"The Father is not going to like what you did to the church," he observes to Jacob.

Who doesn't answer.

"I had  _plans_ for that church."

He did. Sort of. He'd had a few ideas, anyway, which was as good as having plans. But, defiled by flames as it is, the church can no longer withstand them.

Shaking his head, John surveys the ruins with a hand on his hip. "I suppose there's little resistance left here to appreciate a good symbolic gesture anyway."

Jacob shifts a hair, as though he  _might_ take the bait on that one, then sinks scowling back into himself. Too canny to be caught by such an obvious trap. Honestly, John would prefer an ugly argument to the silent treatment. But better still to keep the peace between them. He's in too good a mood to spoil it with Jacob's pragmatic approach to disagreement.

Fingers drumming his thigh thoughtfully, he switches tactics. Lets a needling hint of accusation work under his words.

"Did your wind-up soldiers manage to catch anyone alive, or shall I instruct my people to bury the townsfolk under their baseball diamond?"

Jacob is profoundly indifferent.

Rubbing at the rope burn on his wrists, John concedes that he might very well need to make a material gesture here. Seeing Jacob so concerned on his behalf is quite gratifying, but it's making them both uncomfortable. Overbearing and angry as Jacob's concern tends to be.

"Of course," he clasps his hands behind his back in a show of indifference, rocks up on the balls of his feet, "You can keep whoever you caught. Haul them back to your mazes, weed out the weak and unfit."

Grunting, Jacob finally unbends. Not enough to reply, but no longer  _not_ looking at John with such grim determination.

Hallelujah, progress. He casts his eyes to the heavens and gives thanks.

"Although, they  _should_ go to confession first," he adds, feigning reluctance, "But under the circumstances I think we might waive the formalities."

Circumstances being that his interests currently lie elsewhere.

"Unless you managed to acquire the Deputy," he stipulates quickly. That's non-negotiable. "She's going to atonement."

His fingers curl against each other, eager. There's  _so much_. He can feel it bursting beneath his skin.

Catching the shift in John's mood, Jacob allows himself to be drawn out. But if he hopes to goad John with past failures, he's bound for disappointment.

"Finally admitting the deputy is an issue?" he asks, mocking.

"The Deputy is-" John cuts himself off with a laugh and a shake of his head.  _This_ he won't share yet. "The Deputy is going to join us," he tells Jacob instead. "Just as the Father says. I won't fail."

"Careful, John," his brother warns. "Don't lose sight of the big picture because you got cocky."

"My confidence stems from my belief in the Father and the Project," John corrects him easily. "We're  _right_."

Looking up at the wreck of the water tower, he grins.

"And soon everyone will know."

* * *

 Things have gone wrong somewhere. Rook can tell. Her new life plan ( _go fishing, forget the apocalypse_ ) has not been met with success.

Which is not necessarily Rook's fault. The plan had two steps. It wasn't  _simple_ enough.

"Too much room for explosions," she tells Boomer wisely.

He cocks his head at her, then gets back to lapping out of a bowl she borrowed from someone's china cabinet. Sloshing water all over the cheerful stars and stripes decorating the sides. He, at least, doesn't give her a lecture for her sins.

But Rook doesn't need a peggie around to point out what a long list of crimes she's racked up this time. Two hostages rescued, reckless endangerment of a town, direct communication with a Seed ... a damning list of charges even by her standards.

She picks a splinter out of her arm with her fingernails and flicks it off on the kitchen counter of an enthusiastically prepared little house.

Pulling John out of that plane had been a mistake. Rook can see that now. She might as well have stapled bacon to her face and walked up to a Judge. Slathered herself in honey and stomped on a beehive. (Shot a mad prophet with a ray-gun of dubious, extra-terrestrial design.)

There's a pillar of smoke rising in the south, twisting in the wind as it spreads across the valley. The town itself is out of sight behind trees and miles of farmland, but Rook knows that Fall's End is burning.

They won't be holding a Testy Festy anytime soon.

Splinters gone, she washes her arms gingerly in the sink. The worst of the scrapes have cleaned up alright, just lost skin and a little blood. She should be happy. She didn't even have to kill anyone.

In fact, Rook comes to the surprising realization, she managed to escape without firing a shot in any direction. She feels kind of good about that. Even Boomer made it through without getting his teeth bloody.

Dusting the footprint off her shirt, the stamp of John's boot in her abdomen, Rook pats herself on the back. The ordeal is over. She got what she wanted, John presumable didn't drop his key so he got what  _he_ wanted, and now they can both go back to pretending to be civilized people who do  _not_ want to kill each other.

Nevermind that civilization is two months and three weeks out from self-destructing as that lie falls apart for everyone for good.

Her optimism evaporates and she slumps back into the counter. The stillness of the house weighs on her. She can barely bring herself to look out the windows. 

(Ahead of schedule. It's just ahead of schedule. It was gonna burn anyway.)

Even Boomer's presentation of an old baseball, tail wagging hopefully, can't lift her spirits. Rook feels too small sitting at a table in someone else's home, eating pickled beets out of a jar and tossing the ball down the hallway for Boomer to fetch again and again. Watching smoke drift outside the broken window, glass on the floor. Rooms empty and purposeless without visitors.

She doesn't miss John, he wasn't nice company.

"Even if he is nice to look at," Rook confesses to Boomer.

Boomer, blessed with an unconditional love that the Seed family can only aspire to, drops the ball at her feet and does not judge. Rook gives him a belly-rub, confronting in the dirty truth in the process that she really should be giving him a bath. But that seems a poor return for his loyalty.

_He_ would never push her off a water tower. He wouldn't abandon his friends and neighbors to a horde of blood-thirsty cultists either.

She chucks the baseball harder, throwing the bad thoughts away, listening to it thud into a wall as Boomer takes off after it. His nails click and slither over wooden floors as the ball rolls into another room. Flicking a fingernail against the pickling jar, Rook tries to distract herself from the deserted house. But she can't.

The radio is still clipped to her belt. Waiting.

Breaking suddenly, Rook grabs it. Sets it on the table and stares. Until it stops feeling voluntary and becomes inevitable that she should turn it on. The power clicks over with a little hiss of static.

"-used to salt the fields of conquered territory," Jacob's voice grinds out slow and unstoppable from the speaker. "Sounds like a superstition, until you consider what high salinity does to the soil."

Rook tenses in her seat, instincts prickling alert even though he's miles away.

Baby brother John might be easy to take down with a rifle and a good scope, but Jacob does not fall gracefully. Toppling him demands work (sacrifice) that leaves Rook half-gutted on the ground more often than not. He's feral, not wild, and it's those tattered shreds of civilization that make him so fucking dangerous.

The radio drones on. A rational insanity on the airwaves. An informative PSA for the dead and the damned.

"Too much salt prevents plant roots from soaking in water, you see, makes the soil barren. Fire, on the other hand, enriches the land. Ash is a natural fertilizer. It's ironic, by preventing our forests from burning, we're actually doing more damage to the environment long-term. Death is mother nature's way of strengthening herself. And when we march through Eden's Gate, we will restore the wasteland to its natural beauty. Even a fire has purpose." Jacob's speech pauses, drops to a soft register. "Do you know yours?"

Point made, he cuts out with an unceremonious click.

And nothing else.

There's silence on the Fall's End frequency.

Rook rests her cheek on the table,  _guilty guilty guilty_ , and tries not to hurt for things left behind. 

(Will the aliens hear these messages across the light-years one day? Lost voices of a long-dead world.)

The dial of the radio turns between her thumb and forefinger, twisting in the direction of the peggie channel.

Go fishing.  _Forget_.

Rook slowly puts the radio down.

"This can still work," she tries to convince the table. "We got unlucky, but it can be salvaged."

(The table is not convinced.)

Returning with a furiously wagging tail and the baseball firmly in his teeth, Boomer is more than happy to follow her out of the house.

The afternoon sun shines high above the smoke haze, lighting golden brown patches of fields and gleaming water far across the valley. Rook knows right where to find the fish, if not how to lure them onto her hook. The air up here in the hills is fresh with pine and a crisp wind off the mountains. Blowing the distant smoke away.

New plan:  _stop helping._

Pitching Boomer's toy as far as she can, Rook watching is bounce away downhill. He bounds after it. So enthusiastic it could be the first ball he's ever chased. And slobbered on. Rook wipes her hand off on her pants.

Then she hitches her stolen assault rifle over her shoulder, resolutely ignoring the burning of Fall's End in the distance, and follows her dog into the shade of the woods.

She keeps the radio on.

* * *

 John generously allows Jacob to address his valley. Although he can't help spending the whole time planning what  _he_ wants to say next time he picks up a radio. He won't have anyone forgetting that this is his place. The valley is his to claim, and if he has to drive the stakes in deep so no one forgets, then he will pound them in over and over.

But it soothes his brother to relay dispassionate facts and render blunt judgments, and that's a small concession on John's part. He's not insensitive to the way that Jacob's shoulders relax as he rambles at the radio, the comfort he finds in less emotional distractions. John might dislike that kind of detachment himself, but he's grown to understand Jacob in the years since Joseph rediscovered them both, seen him weak and broken and feels secure enough in their connection to let things lie for later.

There are other issues, however, that need to be addressed.

Such as how Jacob is utterly and comprehensively mistaken about everything on a deeply philosophical level.

"No on is going to learn from this," he tries to explain, gesturing at a ruined house with the straw of his new juice cup.

The two of them are strolling back towards the triage area, which John only agreed to because it gives him time to convince his brother that he's going about things all wrong.

"Sinners have to be shown how futile their sins are, they have to feel that hollow ache inside themselves before they can be filled with the love of the Project."

"Humans are animals," retorts Jacob bluntly, sidestepping an overturned flower-tub. "You have to break their spirits before you can teach them anything. They knew what we were capable of before, but now they will never forget. They are all witnesses to our strengths."

And people accuse  _John_ of playing with his food. Jacob is the one who hunts for sport.

He kicks a loose chunk of concrete, watching it rattle away until it hits a lopsided stack of half-melted tires. Ash streaks the pavement, black and grey.

"We're breaking them free of their  _sins_ ," he gropes for the right words, the ones that will make Jacob understand. "We want to gather them to us, not scatter them to the wind."

Uninterested, Jacob just grunts. His intellect confines itself to history and empire. Things that end in death. It's why he demands material sacrifices, instead of realizing that the most important gifts can't be weighed and measured. The most precious offering is trust.

"My way is better. And I have the conversion rate to prove it."

"Hm." Shrugging, Jacob brushes off his efforts with summary judgment. "You take too long."

John twitches, nettled in spite of himself. They've been having this argument forever. Without Joseph or Faith to moderate, it tends to get heated.

"Some might take a little more cleansing than others," he admits, trying to block the trickle of annoyance before it grows. "But truth is a painful thing. To take it into yourself, bear it out on your body, that's the only way to overcome weakness. By embodying our shame in the flesh, we erase the need for it."

Head tilted to look over at John, Jacob's scars shine in the hazy sunlight.

And John knows better than to speak to him about that. Not without a lot of alcohol and a good exit lined up for both of them, anyway. So he steers them away from the hazards with an easy transition.

"My people might not be as disciplined as yours," he acknowledges, because bitter truth goes down better with a sprinkling of sugar, "But every one of them  _chose_ me, not just the other way around." Neither Jacob nor Faith can boast the same. "No tricks, no conditioning or drugs, just the power of yes."

Jacob makes a rude noise.

"It's  _true_ ," insists John, irritated by the dismissal. "Lasting change comes from inside body and soul."

He's doing his work the way that the Father would want. He's certain.

"You're just training them to tell you what you want to hear."

"They confide in me because that's the  _right_ decision."

"Smart one, anyway," shrugs Jacob, "For survival."

John's breath hisses between his teeth. "That was an accident."

He'd lost his temper, he'd atoned for it. But the memory of Joseph's disappointment each time he brought back dead bodies instead of living souls, each time John had  _failed_ , that strangles the rest of the words in his throat. His fingers dig into the crook his arm.

Let Jacob scoff and sneer, but John's brace enough to own his weaknesses. To embrace his pain instead of holding the world at arm's length. Teaching others to do the same serves as penance and redemption both.

Rubbing over the key, his nails scratch anxiously.

The conversation dies, a dead weight falling over them that even Jacob recognizes as they approach the churchyard where the wounded were gathered.

"Come on, enough of that," he claps a lighter hand down on John's shoulder and urges him away from the medics. A peace offering. "Got something else I want to talk to you about."

More hurt by the reminder of Joseph's disapproval than he wants to think about right now, John lets himself be pushed along to the line of vehicles lining the curb.

Not that he's going to drop a dispute that quick. His unhappiness makes itself known in the twitch of his shoulders, the snap to each step.

"Don't sulk," Jacob grumbles. "I saved something for you."

That gets John's attention. Though not his total forgiveness. His brother's idea of what counts as an olive branch does not always match up to everyone else's.

"Jacob," he says, a flat warning as they circle one of the white vans. "What did you do."

Just barely smiling, Jacob tosses John the keys.

Huffing in frustration, he unlocks the back doors and throws them open.

Joey Hudson cringes away from the light, metal rattling where she's chained to the bench. Mouth taped closed and eyes terrified.

"Gave one of yours a haircut and the uniform," Jacob explains from somewhere in the background, satisfied with a job well done. "Not the sort of ruse to hold up long, but it didn't need to. Until you jumped the gun and we had to go in early."

John doesn't answer. Confronted abruptly with a choice of his own.

The car keys bite into the meat of his palm.

* * *

 She's miles from Fall's End, breaking into a small boathouse this time, when the radio crackles to life again.

"Deputy."

Rook drops her almost liberated fishing rod and lets out a distressed groan.

John's voice rings eagerly from the handheld, loud in the sagging shack. Of course he couldn't keep quiet for long, couldn't go without getting the last word in the ears of God, man, and law-enforcement.

"Perhaps you think that you've escaped salvation, that there is no cleansing deep enough to reach inside where you need it. But we  _understand_ you, Deputy. You will be embraced, accepted, loved. The gift you have been given is difficult, I know, and there are things in you that must fight against it. I am willing to be patient, to hold firm until those struggles cease."

Rook makes a muffled noise of objection that no one hears or cares about. Except Boomer, who licks anxiously at her upside-down face as she sinks to the ground. The floorboards creak, warped with water-damage. She breathes in mildew and rust.

Because he has no decency, John keeps talking. "I will fulfill this promise, as I have fulfilled the one before it. Eden opens itself to those who cleave to the truth, Deputy."

The truth is he ended their deal by  _kicking her off a catwalk_. Digging her fingers into her scalp, Rook tries not to panic. Up close she can see old nail-heads poking up from the floor as the boathouse splinters and rots around them.

"I look forward to our next meeting. We have so much to talk about," John concludes with an air of happy anticipation that feels personally unsafe.

He'll start singing something pointed and hilariously inappropriate any second now, as per Seed family values, and that is just ... that is just over the line. Getting his key back has only  _encouraged_ him.

The radio comes on again, and Rook pitches the noisy plastic devil right out the window.

"Dep, you there-"

Dutch's voice goes sailing away right before there's a splash.

Wincing, Rook hunches her shoulders. She should go get that, dry it off and take the call. But it's not worth the price of any more Seeds lecturing her today. Rook is well and truly sermonized. Hand to God, she respects the environment, the Collapse, and her fellow man. (In that they are all trying to kill her.)

She picks herself up off the floor, dragging a dented tackle box with her.

Time to get the hell out of Holland Valley. She's not married to the place like John is. He can stick needles and other sexually-suggestive implements into the peggies that appreciate it. Rook will do her fishing somewhere else.

She hightails it for the hills, Boomer trotting at her heels in the fading sunset light.

* * *

John doesn't return to the tender mercies of the medics. Doesn't care that his shirt remains unbuttoned from their one and only attempt to get him bandaged up, bruises left exposed to the open air instead. Let everyone see, let everyone know. His body bears witness to the truth in every scar.

By evening, however, he's more than ready to take a rest. Just as soon as Jacob clears his lot out. They have separate responsibilities, each their own place to uphold. Just as well, since they don't always see eye-to-eye.

"Don't go up in the sky without ground support," Jacob can't resist offering last minute advice that John is in no way obligated to follow. "You had no reason to get in that plane after all we did to make the ranch secure."

"I  _had_ ground support," John argues.

But he's too wound up to press the point, buzzing with over-tired energy. The need to bathe, eat, sleep and then get right back to work. As many of those at the same time as possible.

He's got a Deputy to retrieve.

Treading on Jacob's heels all the way to his armored truck, the head of a convoy, John all but shoves him in and closes the door himself.

"Your dire warnings are noted and duly appreciated. Now go on, shoo. Back to you mountains. You can unwind with a nice scented bath, maybe chase a militia or two if you're feeling frisky."

Jacob levels an unimpressed look at him, but it does nothing to hide his growing annoyance from John. Smirking in way he knows annoys everyone, John spins the bunker key on its string. Innocent.

He loves his brother but, God help them, does Jacob test his patience. Still, he knows that his brother loves him too. It's in the way he puts up with restless conversation over the radio, the ground he gives when he doesn't have to, the way he stormed down to the valley when he knew John wouldn't thank him for a rescue. All the small, unspeaking gestures of family. And in return, John doesn't make him say it.

On very, very rare occasions, knowing is enough. He can forgive Jacob his troubled faith and terse criticisms. The state of his soul is a delicate one. Best left to the Father's stabilizing counsel, for all their sakes.

Neither of them can risk losing their family again.

"Have you heard from Joseph?" he asks impulsively, right before Jacob rolls the window up.

And the way Jacob stops, keys in the ignition and eyes moving warily to study his face, tells him more than he wanted to know.

"He's still in the Henbane," says Jacob at last, slow and expressionless. "Ministering."

That's a cold bite of disappointment, but John swallows and doesn't embarrass himself further.

He has his instructions, the work he was given. He can't expect the Father to drop everything because he spent a night waylaid in the woods. But he can't help the lightning-flicker of the idea that if he can just bring the lost deputy in, convince her to join the family, then he'll have secured his place for good. Proved himself and averted whatever disaster haunts his future. Earned Joseph's acceptance finally, finally without reservation or condition.

That comforts him as he waves goodbye to Jacob, who rides out fearlessly in the vanguard of his departing troops.

Red taillights disappear into the dusk, the rumble of tires and engines slowly fading into quiet.

John takes a cleansing breath. Taking a moment, he gathers himself before he starts gathering his own people with new instructions.

The wind curls around him, smoke-warm and inviting.

_I have seen you, I saw you._

Two different voices, both saying the same thing.

He was wrong.

It thrills up his spine like an atoning lash. He understands now. Why the Father wants the junior deputy to atone. What part John himself is meant to play in it. The memory is a finger-light touch on his face, three bullets that never broke skin, an invigorating flush of life. His teeth bite down in determination.

She's like  _Joseph_.

The Deputy is a prophet.

And John will be the one to bring her into the fold.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John's logic is bulletproof. No way will his new-found belief in his own indestructibility come back to bite him. (Haha.)


	5. lie in wait

Mountains stand peaceful over the valley, their wooded slopes rising gracefully above the haze. Rook breathes deep as the sky clears before dawn, air cool with the fresh scent of water. The cut-crystal serenity of the deep wilds. Distractions and impurities washed away downhill. Ferns curl around her feet as she follows deer trails through Whitetail Park, the consciousness of having escaped something lightening her steps.

With her dog and her new fishing rod at her side, she almost feels free.

The solitude is a lie, of course. Big Brother has the park bugged, and that's not even Jacob's doing.

Eli's lucky the world ends before he gets buried under an avalanche of fines for privacy violation. In a way, the cult is right: they're all guilty of something now. Speeding, looting, vandalism, hunting out of season, murder in  _all_ the degrees plus one or two new ones ... Rook gives up trying to list the crimes people have committed right to her face. There are too many to count.

The paperwork alone would de-forest the county if the fires of Armageddon didn't get to it first.

Hell, she realizes as she swishes her rod at evergreen shadows, she should be ticketing  _herself_ right now for fishing without a license.

But that won't stop her.

Nothing is going to stop her today.

Spinning her reel with determination, Rook strides uphill. Next time she finds a deserted cabin, she's going to treat herself to a real shower. A bath, even, if she finds the supplies to rig up a proximity mine or two. It won't be the Wolf's Den, but it'll be a little closer to home.

"You too," she tells Boomer, "We both need a bath now."

Oblivious to his soapy future, he lets her pet him for a second before racing off in pursuit of more interesting smells.

Dust and doghair cling to her gloves. Rook wrinkles her nose. (Maybe John would be less obsessed with cleanliness if half the county hadn't stopped bathing at the height of summer.) But it's hard to worry about such things in the vast, sprawling wilderness. There's room enough for anything out here, even Rook.

A flash of light winking on the the slope above her effectively kills that illusion.

Dropping low to the rocks, Rook eyes the ridge warily.

Dawn has just begun to slide over the mountains, catching a reflection off metal and glass, sending dancing lights across her vision.

Rook gets out her binoculars.

A squad of Chosen, their rifle scopes glinting in the sun, marches along the road that runs the top of the ridge.

Breathing a sigh and a curse, she digs herself deeper into the stony ground for cover. Maybe her destination is too close to Stone Ridge and its training centers. But if Eli can hide his Wolf's Den in the heart of Jacob's stronghold, Rook is fairly certain she can get away with pretending to be an ordinary fisherman for a few weeks. (Assuming the wolverines don't get her in a fit of karmic retribution.)

She follows the peggies through her binoculars.

It's an odd group, Chosen shepherding Angels. They march along at a slow pace, heading out onto the wooden footbridge that crosses over a dry streambed. Rook counts maybe twelve Chosen, and five Angels at the center of the formation.

Bunched up too tight for the footbridge, the soldiers step back to let the Angels pass first. Moving with such smooth coordination that it raises the hairs on the back of Rook's neck.

That's a flanking move.

The Angels file onto the bridge.

And, at a hand signal from the squad leader, the Chosen all raise their rifles.

Gunfire cracks across the ridge as they open fire, echoes bouncing off stone. The Angels crumple, neatly executed.

Rook watches from a distance, blood running cold.

Half the peggies move to clean up, heaving the bodies over the side of the bridge while their friends keep the covered.

Then they all shoulder their weapons, and file back the way they came. Up the ridge towards the Chalet.

In minutes, the bridge is deserted. Wooden slats swaying in the empty air.

"The fuck," Rook whispers to no one.

Are Jacob's men  _culling_ Angels? Did they outlive their usefulness or something? But she's never heard of them using their own as target practice without cause. Did they run out of Whitetails and civilians, should she be happy about this?

(She's not, an instinctive sense of danger prickling her skin.)

With the Chosen out of sight, she gets to her feet and goes to investigate. Boomer sticks close to her side, whining softly. He's anxious, pressing up against her legs until she near trips over him.

"Easy, boy," she pats him reassuringly, "Just got to check this out."

Risky, but she has no other way to confirm that she really witnessed Jacob's men slaughtering his workforce.

There are no answers at the bottom of the bridge, though. Just more bodies. Shadows lie thick across them, a blue-lavender shroud.

Getting a good look at the sheer number of corpses waiting for her in the gully, Rook draws her handgun on reflex.

That's a lot of dead Angels.

They litter the ground, joints bent up at odd angles. Skinny arms and legs sticking out from their ragged, broken-bird bodies, heads shaved bare and full of holes. Dark spatters of blood drying on the rocks. Freshly kills. Jacob's men have made more than one death march out here.

They've been doing this all night.

(You don't need a reason, Rook knows this. Not out here in the abyss.)

One of the Angels twitches, close enough for her to see its eyes blinking. Close enough to see her standing in the shadow of the rocks. Blood oozes out of its throat as it works, air squeaking through the ruined facemask in a green wisp of Bliss fumes. The firing squad had missed their shots, taking out part of its face but not the brain.

Its fingers scrabble loosely as it reaches for her.

Trying to speak.

Rook shoots it through the head.

Nothing else she can do. (Snowflakes of ash and they're all dead, dead men walking.) Recoil kicks up her arm.

The Angel falls back, shudders and stills. Dead at last.

She lowers the gun slowly, unable to look away. There's something uniquely horrible about the Angels up close. Trapped inside the meat of their bodies, rotting from the brain down until there's nothing but madness leaking out.

Birdsong begins to chirrup in the trees, little wings fluttering. Light grows brighter as the sun brushes clouds yellow-pink with morning light. The world waking to a brand new day. Rook grips her gun tight, forefinger tapping on the trigger-guard.

(Shouldn't have come, shouldn't have looked.)

"Come on," she tells Boomer quietly, eyeing the carrion birds above. "We don't want to be here."

Knowing Jacob, he'll have someone out to burn the bodies soon. No, they don't want to be here at all.

They head north, following a quick stream that runs down from the mountains. Rook zig-zags from bank to bank to obscure their trail. Water foams around the rocks, splattering her bare arms. Cold as snowmelt and stone. Shocking her away in goosebumps and shivers.

Soon enough, she finds what she's looking for: a short waterfall splashing down into a cleft in the slope. A natural basin where she'd heard there was good fishing. Deeply shadowed by rocks on three sides.

Setting down on a large boulder, Rook scrubs her hands across her face. Cooled by the misty spray, droplets of condensation catch on her eyelashes. Refracting the world until she rubs them away. But she doesn't feel like she's seeing anything clearly.

(The heralds haven't started some sort of civil war overnight, have they?)

The waterfall rushes loud in her ears, overwhelming. Drowning it all out. Rook dangles her feet in the basin, letting clear water run over the tops of her boots. Done sniffing around the area, Boomer hunkers down beside her and puts his head on his paws. Together they watch the water pouring down.

If there's more gunfire from the bridge, she can't hear it.

Slowly the tension clutching her shoulders loosens its grip.

She flips open the battered yellow tackle-box, chooses a lure at random. How much do the fish care what they bite into anyway? She can make this work if she just tries hard enough.

Jacob Seed's Angel round-up won't keep her and her dog from eating salmon today.

"Think I can catch us lunch?" she asks Boomer.

He thumps his tail against the stone, and has complete faith in her.

* * *

By lunchtime, it becomes clear that Boomer's confidence in her is grievously misplaced.

Rook growls as her line snaps  _again_.

The fish barely bite, and when they do, she loses them with pulling too hard.

"And what even is bait?" she complains to Boomer, banging through the tackle-box in search of a lure she  _hasn't_ tried yet. "How do you tell which of these little bobbers is the  _right_ little bobber?"

Frustration makes her sloppy, an overzealous cast sending the hook bouncing off the rocky wall across the basin.

Boomer wines, ears pricking up at something more urgent than the sound of Rook swearing. Wary, she shuts up and follows the point of his nose.

A woman in blue waders stumbles up the path moments later, panting and looking over her shoulder with a hunted air.

Rook grabs the gun.

"Oh shit," the woman swears, raising her hands in surrender, "Please don't be a peggie."

Cautious, Rook shakes her head.

"Great." The stranger slumps down on the ground to catch her breath. "Neither am I, please don't shoot."

Rook sets the gun down, but doesn't relax just yet.

"Um, alright then." The woman seems a little off-put by the silence, but immediately endears herself by holding out her hand for Boomer to smell. "Hi, I'm Skylar Kohrs."

The name isn't immediately recognizable, but that doesn't mean much. Rook has a bad memory, obviously. (Can't even remember her own name.)

"Listen, uh," Skylar looks at her hopefully and say in a rush, "I know we just met and all, but could you maybe walk me back to the road? I was on my way home from Landsdowne when my car blew a tire and there was this  _thing_ in the bushes. I panicked and ran and tripped over this dead, half-chewed body and lost my gun and now I ... I really don't want to walk past it by myself."

This sounds awfully like the sort of good deed Rook is supposed to avoid. (Never too late to keep those New Year's resolutions.)

Her reluctance must communicate itself, because Skylar leans forward.

"Please," she begs, "I've got to get back to my boyfriend and then I've got to catch a giant fish before the peggies close the airstrips. Uh," she catches up to herself with a grimace, "Weird as it may sound given what's going on around here."

Rook shrugs, because that actually sounds pretty reasonable to her. She would also like to catch a giant fish.

"Okay."

"Really?" Skylar brightens up with relief. "Thank you!"

Closing up her tackle-box, Rook decides to risk leaving it behind. That way she has to come back for it. No excuses.

They walk along the stream, Boomer ranging through the woods around them.

"Wait, I  _do_ know you!" exclaims Skylar after several long minutes of staring. "You're that deputy from the posters! I heard you were trying to get a resistance going. Are you out here looking for the Whitetails or something?"

"I'm just here for the fish."

"Oh. How's that going?" Skylar asks, polite as bullshit because she'd just walked in on Rook cussing out her tackle-box.

Rook shrugs.

"I'm a pro angler myself," Skylar states with the confidence of fact. "Gotta say, I'm impressed you went for that spot. Chinook are tough."

"Not having much luck," admits Rook.

"Keep trying," Skylar advises. "Fishing is the best sport in the world, trust me. You'll be happy you stuck with it in the end."

Nodding, Rook lets the conversation lag. She'd not thrilled about being recognized, but it's nice to get encouragement from someone who actually catches fish. At least  _someone_ out here knows what they're doing.

Halfway down the gully, Skylar taps her shoulder, points down to where the stream splits around a series of little hills.

"That's where I saw the body."

Rook glances for Boomer, reflexively, but he's in the dirt at her feet, scratching vigorously at one ear. (He's fine.) They're not too far from where Jacob trains his judges, though. IF that's what Skylar saw in the trees, she's lucky it didn't run her down.

But nothing jumps out at them before they reach the road.

Empty, but it makes Rook twitchy to be out in the open.

"I can make it from here." Skylar smiles gratefully, regaining a measure of confidence. "It's not too far."

"Okay." Rook decides to trust her.

Then she passes over her rifle, because Skylar should have the moral support of a good weapon if she's going to walk the roads. At the very least, it'll give her a fighting chance. (And Rook does dumb things like wander the Whitetails armed with nothing but brass knuckles and a slingshot anyway.)

"Thank you." Taking the rifle, Skylar holds it in a reassuringly secure grip. "Thank you so much, deputy."

"No problem."

"Be careful out there," Waving Skylar walks backwards to shout, "And if you ever want tips from a pro, feel free to look me up. I'm hoping to get out of this hellhole as soon as possible, but until then I'll be at Dylan's Master Bait Shop,"

Rook waves back. ( _Get going before you get eaten_.)

Then she heads into the woods.

That went surprisingly alright. Not even a little explosion. (She does not look over her shoulder in the direction of Holland Valley.) Tossing the baseball for Boomer as they stroll upstream, her gait swings light and easy. She's starting to think today might be a good day.

Then she goes and fucks it up.

She detours to check on the dead body.

* * *

"Now, deputy," John says, all encouraging smiles. A long, twin-pronged barbeque fork in hand. "I don't think you should refuse something until you've tried it."

Hudson glares at him from her confession chair, head twisted at a high angle to avoid the tines of the fork as it hovers perilously near her throat.

"Try shoving your confession up your ass," she spits, the chair's wheels squeaking on the floor as it wiggles with the force of her anger.

John sighs, pulling back to tap the fork against the side of his thigh. She's clearly backsliding. It was too much to hope that her brief brush with release would do anything other than set her back. Even returning her to the safety of his bunker has done nothing to foster a sense of gratitude in her stubborn soul.

She's not beyond saving, however. Especially not now that her confession could make a real difference to the Project.

"Confession is the best thing you can do for yourself," he explains  _again_ in a truly heroic display of patience. "I'm making an effort to drag you up from a pit of sin, deputy, the least you can do is meet me halfway. I promise, it won't hurt. Well," he considers a moment, compelled to amend himself, "No more than it must. A little suffering is good for the soul."

He smiles.

Hudson opens her mouth to spew more venom, and John silences her with a light rap of the fork to the arm of the chair, in between where her fingers spread and clutch in fury.

"Your colleague," he repeats himself patiently, "The rookie. Tell me about her."

Hudson comes back with something so blasphemous, John's fingers clench on the long handle of the fork.

Unharmed, he reminds himself. Hudson is supposed to remain  _unharmed_ and John fights with his definition of the word, because how can anything that brings her closer to salvation be counted as harm? But the Deputy had held firm on this point, and John is attempting to prove how giving he can be, how rewarding it is to show him trust. He needs to become worthy of his responsibilities. Joseph is counting on him to complete his work.

Thus this very frustrating exercise.

"I am trying to achieve something here," John levels the fork at Hudson's left eye, "And I believe that  _you_ , deputy Hudson, could provide a valuable contribution to the Project. Or you could become an object lesson in the dangers of sinful disobedience. Your choice."

She pushes herself back in the chair, rebellious but starting to panic at how close the tines of the fork are to the delicate skin under her eye.

"I myself have carried my own share of guilt," John adds, hoping that a bit of honesty on his part might encourage her to reciprocate. "I have been blind to what was before me, let my sins grow fat with pride and swollen with envy. But the truth has a way of puncturing," he wiggles the fork at her eye, "our most cherished sins, letting the poison gush out to reveal how empty we are."

The Deputy had reminded him of this, a painful lesson that John welcomes gratefully.

He had tested her, tested  _Joseph_ by questioning his wisdom, but surely he can be forgiven that. Now his doubts are washed away. Now he knows.

But not enough, not nearly enough, and he tests the sharpness of the fork against the pad of his thumb. Smiling at the slight prick of blood. He's eager, he admits it. Peeling the deputy open and relieving her of sins is sure to bring him closer to his own place in Eden. And still he knows so little, can hardly prepare himself without any personal insights into who she is, what she wants, what the Project can  _do_ for her.

But Hudson keeps blocking him, digging in her heels and clinging to her chains after all he's done to set her free. He entertains the paranoid suspicion that this is another trial, something the two of them conspired together. But that doesn't bear thinking of, not if he wants to keep his temper. He holds on hard to his self-control.

"Come now, deputy Hudson," he tries coaxing, "This isn't a difficult question. How about we start with when she started working with you, hm?"

Hudson wavers, he can see an uncertain flicker in her eyes, but then her expression locks in defiance.

"Get fucked."

John snaps, and slams the fork into the meat of her shoulder.

She lets out a very satisfying scream as he pulls it out. Leaving twin puncture marks behind, welling with blood. Teeth set in a tight smile, he sets his foot against the chair and kicks it spinning across the room. It careens wildly, hits the far wall and topples over with a crash. Hudson chokes out a curse, curling up as much as her bonds allow.

"Well," John breathes out lightly, turning to their audience. Gesturing with the bloody fork. "I certainly hope one of  _you_ will be more forthcoming."

A pair of resistance fighters, snatched fresh from the side of the road, cringe from him with pleasing expressions of terror.

* * *

Rook doesn't go chasing after Skylar's report of a dead body on a whim. She's seen too many to be worried about solving murders. But 'chewed-up' probably (God, _hopefully_ ) means a wild animal attack. And wild animals are scary as fuck, but only some of them can climb trees. Rook just wants to know if she should plan to sleep fifteen feet above the ground tonight or if she and her dog are safe to pitch a tent.

It's a good, practical reason for committing a dumbass mistake.

Locating the body takes a while, but eventually she finds it near the water, propped up against a large rock.

Little vines grow green around it, twining young and tender through the thin grass. The corpse leans into the boulder's support like someone who was too tired to go on.

But Angels don't get tired.

Standing half in the stream, Rook stares, fiddling nervously with her handgun in a way that she really shouldn't be fidgeting with a loaded firearm.

Is her sense of geography totally fucked or something? Angels in the Whitetails, Jacob in the Valley, it's like no one respects boundaries anymore.

She studies the body. It's wasted with decay, insects flitting around it hungrily. Been out here for days, she would guess. Maybe a week. Not an escapee from Jacob's culling, then. The plants rustle softly, peaceful-like. Curling around the body gently, but no cover is enough to hide the telltale facemask, the rough cloth of an Angel's vestments.

Glancing away, Rook can see the long, muddy mark where Skylar must have tripped, heaving boots tearing through the delicate vines.

Sure enough, Boomer comes trotting up with a little revolver that she takes absently, spinning the cylinder to count bullets before she tucks it into her belt.

"Good boy."

Angels don't run from danger, they don't lie down.

They don't sleep, eat, or piss as far as she knows. They certainly don't bathe, but neither do the peggies or Rook at this point. (Beet stains under her fingernails, sap ground into her elbows, dirt and dust itching her scalp. Yeah, she should have showered miles back.) But the Angels don't care about any of that. So divorced from human existence, it makes killing them the bad kind of easy.

Looking down at Boomer, seated obediently at her feet, she scratches one nail against the barrel of the gun.

This body doesn't look chewed on to Rook, but she's too far away to see much through the plants. Except how obviously dead it is.

She shoots it twice in the head with her pistol anyway.

It slumps, headless. Bloodless too, at this stage of composition. Vines tearing away from the rock as it folds over and takes them down with it.

"No sense taking chances," Rook explains to Boomer, apologetic.

He grumbles, nose twitching to sniff the air.

Cautiously, she approaches for a closer look at the body.

Something definitely taken a few bites out of its shoulder and legs, gnawing at the bones. Reluctant to touch, Rook hovers a few feet away.

What the fuck wants to eat a dead Angel, she wonders.

Boomer's rumbling turns into a steady growl, a warning that rips her out of morbid curiosity and into high alert.

Turning slow, neck prickling, Rook gets a good look at her answer.

A pale wolf eyes her hungrily from the treeline, hackles raised.

_Judge_.

Milky white eyes glare at her, cloudy with overexposure to Bliss. Favoring its left leg in a way that suggests a badly healed break. Ribs showing.

"Fuck," Rook mutters, raising the gun. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck."

Boomer snaps at the air beside her. The judge lowers its head, ears and lips pulling back in an ugly snarl. Unwilling to run from people when it had been trained to view them as food.

Rook lines up her sights, and aims for the head.

* * *

The resistance fighters turn out to be more than wiling to share what they know. Once John explains just how damaging the consequences of sin can be, anyway. After that, and a suitable demonstration to hammer the point home, they tell him everything.

Disappointingly, 'everything' turns out to be very little indeed. It does not include any personal details about the Deputy, but John is satisfied enough by what they  _do_ know to baptize them immediately. He's developed something of a backlog, in fact, of sinners to wash clean, so he practices the virtues of patience and generosity by doing so before he gets on with more interesting work.

Finally, though,  _finally_ he's able to leave the river and ride out for the last person, aside from himself, reported to have seen the Deputy,

Larry Parker.

It had taken the sinners a few hours to realize the power of acceptance and give him the name. But now he has an answer: last anyone in the resistance had seen the Deputy, she had been headed for Parker's lab. And, restless with his people's failure to pin down her current whereabouts, John heads out to question the resident mad scientist in person.

At least he has the comfort of knowing that the Deputy's habit of disappearing isn't personal.

It hadn't just been John,  _no one_ had seen her for weeks before she returned out of nowhere. To speak with him, and John feels a little pleased by that. Silence on the radio even now, but she came for him when it really mattered.

"The Marshal said she couldn't be trusted," one of the men had told him, "That she was a coward. I don't - I don't know anything else, please. That's just what I heard from the guys at the trailer park. And I never met her, I don't know, I swear!"

The resistance might have lost her, but John is going to be the one who finds the Deputy before anyone else.

So he rides out to her last known location in an armored van, surrounded by guards in case the Marshal has recovered his manhood after yesterday's defeat.

He suffers the drive in impatient curiosity, taking back seat as his people ensure he reaches his destination safely. At least one the way back, he'll have Parker to talk to. She had mentioned him, too, he remembers, which leads him to hope that he'll pry something useful out of the old crackpot. Even if it's just her name.

A shame he hadn't had the forethought to ask the Deputy more questions while she was in reach. What little she'd given him isn't nearly enough.

Really, John thinks, he's going to quite enjoy forcing the truth out of that mouth.

Impulsively, he picks up his radio.

"Jacob, what do you remember about Larry Parker? You came with me at least once to visit him."

For a few long minutes, he has nothing to do but wait as the landscape rolls by in golden hills and scorched fields.

Then:

"I wouldn't worry about Larry if I were you, John," says Faith, breathy through the speaker. "He wasn't very stable, poor man. It's such a shame we couldn't do more to help him."

John raises his eyebrows at his reflection in the window. "What do you mean?"

"Oh-"

Is it just him, or does Faith sound more distracted than usual?

"-it's just that he seemed so sad to me. They laughed at him at NASA, you know. Such a shame. I think he really could have benefitted from the Father's guidance."

"Hm," John taps his fingers along the radio's casing, but doesn't reply.

"We're all so glad you're safe, John," she adds after a moment, all sweet sincerity. "your salvation is very important to everyone, you know. Especially the Father."

John bites his tongue, fighting the urge to beg for a word from Joseph himself. He shouldn't, but he  _wants_ to. Craving reassurances that he doesn't need.

The radio clicks before can make up his mind, a burst of static.

"What did I tell you about using this channel?" Jacob's voice comes out flat and cold, an undisguised demand. "Unless you have something meaningful to say, don't speak."

"Roger  _that_ ," John snaps back, not liking his brother's tone.

Whatever's crawled up Jacob's ass, he does not appreciate having it taken out on him without warning. Yesterday it had been all  _sit down, Johnny, you're injured_ , but heaven forbid that Jacob suffer an emotion for longer than twenty-four hours. John curbs the desire to ask if his brother has broken out in a rash after his spontaneous bout of  _feelings_.

But there's an odd tension growing in the pause after he releases the button. Neither Jacob nor Faith taking advantage of his silence with a shot in any direction.

"I'm sorry, Jacob," says Faith at last, subdued. "I only mean to help."

"Then you know what you need to do," Jacob replies, unwarrantedly severe.

If possible, Faith's response is  _genuinely_ regretful, "I'm sorry."

They both stop talking after that, leaving John to stare at his radio in faint surprise.

That was ... unusual. He wonders what Jacob has been saying to Faith to get that kind of reaction. While his oldest brother has never warmed to any of their sisters, he generally tolerates their overtures for Joseph's sake.

Not today, apparently.

But John knows better than to poke  _that_ angry bear on an open channel.

Thoughtful, he settles back into his seat. Maybe, once the Deputy has atoned, he'll make time to catch up with his siblings properly. It seems he missed a few things while he was busy.

He can't say he has much sympathy for Faith's obvious unhappiness, however.

Joseph is  _his_ brother just as much as he is everyone's Father. And none of the Faiths will ever take that away from him. He won't be replaced, and he resents that she sometimes makes him feel as if he could.

One day, he's going to watch this Faith get hers, just like all the others.

Until then, he's got better things to do.

John tosses the radio aside, and spends the rest of the ride imagining all the ways that the Deputy might be brought to confess.

* * *

Rook approaches the dead judge carefully, a slippery-thin carpet of dead evergreen needles underfoot. It had run her a long chase through the woods, fighting tenaciously for life despite its injuries. She'd killed it in the end, though. Shoving at its massive head with the toe of one boot, she watches flecks of blood and greenish foam drip from its jaws.

(It's dead, it's dead, it won't hurt anyone now.)

The trees stand tall around them, the silent indifference of nature. Kneeling down, Rook takes a closer look at the red stripes dyed in the fur of the wolf's face.

One of the rejects that Jacob cuts loose because he's a bastard. Starving and unable to hunt. Hungry and angry enough to try for something fresher than a bite of dead Angel. She grimaces. It hadn't hurt Boomer, but it had driven him off a ways into the trees. She'll have to cajole him back or wait for him to return on his own.

A walk through the Whitetails inevitably devolves into playing Little Red Riding Hood in kevlar and camo. Except the wolves are on drugs, the woods are one fire, and Grandma's nailed to her fucking cottage door. 

(And fucking Jacob fucking  _burned Fall's End_.)

Rook pulls her utility knife out of its sheath, focusing on what's in front of her because she can't do anything else.

She'll skin the wolf, trade the pelt for ammo and maybe soap or toothpaste.

(Everything is her fault.  _Hers_ and owning it don't mean a thing when she can't fix it.)

With practiced slices of the knife, Rook starts cutting the pelt away from the wolf.

She tugs a fold away from its belly, confused when the skin rips from the muscle weirdly, clinging filaments  _tearing_ like roots-

"Deputy!" Faith's voice rings through the clear air, and Rook instinctively jerks to silence a radio she no longer carries. (Don't make eye-contact, don't talk to people who aren't there.) "I found you!"

Knife flipping into a backhanded grip, drops of wolf blood flicking from the blade, Rook spins around to find a trio of Angels staring down at her from  _way too close_.

"I've been looking for you for so long," the middle one says in Faith's voice, delighted and confiding and coming wait-wrong- _what_  out of the mouth of an Angel. "I was starting to worry I would be too late!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the case of one junior deputy Rook fishing without a license: intent was all they could prove.


	6. such pursuits

Faith giggles, her laughter tripping light and airy from the Angel's stumbling lips. All three of them sway to side to side, green vapor puffing from their face-masks. Wisps of Bliss sparkle in the light that falls patchwork through the evergreens, sunbeams glancing of the Angels' stubbled heads and shining across their white shirts.

Rook trembles on the brink of running, eyes darting between them.

They have her cornered on this spur of the foothills: a steep drop on one side, a rocky slope to the road on the other. Swapping her knife to her other hand, she slinks low to the ground. Tension wound tight to breaking.

Herald's voice in an Angel's mouth and it's one too many impossible things before breakfast to take.

Especially from  _Faith Seed_.

Rook's index finger taps a trigger-quick beat on the hilt of her knife.

The talkative Angel steps forward, hands lifting, "I want you to know, deputy-"

She charges it, stabbing deep into its eye with the knife.

A last ditch effort to save her sanity. Follows through with a pistol shot angled up into the Angel's chin. Smashing Faith's fever dreams with a gunpowder  _crack_. The recoil kicks hard up her arm, gun kicking back painfully, but she's too desperate to care.

The knife wrenches out of her other hand as the Angel drops.

The thump it makes as it hits the ground  _sounds_ real.

Rook stares down at it, fingers tingling.

It still looks like itself when it's dead.

"Wait," one of the others says, lurching forward with none of Faith's grace and all her honeycomb deceit, "Please, I'm trying to-"

Rook shoots that one twice, stumbling back out of reach. Swinging to aim at the last Angel, she gets the  _click_ of an empty chamber.

"-explain," the third Angel finishes, still reaching for her. Faith's voice rising, "You have to let-"

She swaps for her other gun, the revolver, and empties it into the Angel's face. Gunshot-loud denial echoes through the trees, rebounding from the mountains.

_no_

_no no no_

It goes down just like the others, a bleeding mess.

Feet shifting for better balance on the uneven ground, Rook ditches the empty revolver, reloads her pistol, and keeps her finger on the trigger until she's sure that none of them are getting up again.

Then she goes to retrieve her knife.

It's lodged deep, she realizes as she tries to pull it out of the Angel's ruined eye-socket. Tugging at it, she presses her other hand down on the dead man's face for leverage, fingers spread. His skin is still warm, a sticky smear of blood and fluid spattered across the bridge of his nose.

(John was easy and Jacob was tough, but Faith ... Rook flinches at nothing.)

She realizes that her knife is sunk nearly to the hilt now, accidentally shoved deeper as she bears down on instinct. Fighting to silence a voice that's only in her mind now. The Angel is dead, he doesn't care, but she draws back a little, stomach twisting guilty.

_sorry_

Killing Angels is an ugly, messy ordeal. And it's not getting any easier when they're little mouthpieces for Faith to lie through. One more fucked-up discovery Rook would gladly have never made. Her grip slips on the knife, unsteady.

(Not letting Faith get her this time, no.)

She nearly chokes when the second Angel, not shot all the way through the head enough, speaks from the dirt.

"You started this," Faith whispers, a quiet reproach. "And now we'll never be free until you listen."

Rook yanks the knife free with the power of sheer adrenalin.

what does she have to do to make it  _stop_

"Do you re-"

She cuts its throat, slashing deep through whatever Faith would say next.

Blood gushes out, hot and steaming Bliss fumes. The Angel gurgles, thrashes, and bleeds to death.

Rook watches the whole time, knife poised. Breath dragging hard through her lungs, she digs her knees down until she can smell the dirt, soft with evergreen needles and dust. Wanting to look up, check the clear blue sky, but she can't risk looking away in case the Angels start moving again.

They don't.

Slowly, she lowers her arm as the minutes crawl past.

She should get out of here.

Pushing herself to her feet, she wipes the knife clean on her shirt and puts it away. Then she goes to retrieve the revolver from the dirt. Body aching, sick and low. So much for a quiet afternoon.

Rubbing her bloodstained gloves on her pants, she tilts her face up to the sunlight and lets her shoulders relax.

"That wasn't very nice, deputy," Faith scolds behind her.

Rook whirls around.

There's another Angel behind her. Oozing blood from multiple gunshot wounds on its torso, one arm dangling broken. Dirt smeared all over its front, long dark streaks where it dragged itself out of a mass grave to hunt her down.

Rook shoots from the hip, watches it fall back as at least one shot hits home.

"Don't worry," says Faith in a honey tone of reassurance from where her puppet lies in the dust, "I forgive you."

The Angel starts to get up again, slow and wheezing with the effort. Blood dripping from the hole in the side of its face. It takes two headshots to keep an Angel down.

Rook squeezes the trigger and gets nothing.

She's well and truly out of bullets now.

Desperate, she throws the gun. It thumps into the Angel's chest, falls uselessly to the ground.

Faith just laughs, green haze leaking from the Angel's mask and wounds. Eyes crinkling up in an expression of mirth that doesn't give life to its Bliss-blinded eyes.

Numb with real terror, Rook can't force herself to move. She's seen the Angels in the gully, she'll never outlast them all. But she still has her knife, her dynamite, her teeth and nails if it comes to that.

"Don't be scared, deputy," Faith lies sweetly, a double-toned wheeze through the Angel's lungs. "All you need to do is  _listen_. I know if you hear me out, you'll understand. I'm trying to help."

Flinging herself off the cliffs would be preferable than suffering Faith's 'help' again.

Rook edges backwards. Overcoming the paralyzing confusion of how the fuck Faith is  _possessing_ \- Nope, don't think about it, she shakes her head. Sanity left the county when Larry Parker left Earth. All she needs to know is how she's going to get out of this.

Another step, angling for where the trees and rocks of the hill turn into empty air.

(Fucking take a leap of her own this time.)

"No, no," protests Faith, her puppet wavering forward. "Wait."

Can she  _see_ through its eyes too, Rook wonders wildly, or is this some elaborate game of hidden cameras and radios?

"We don't have much time left, deputy, you have to stop running."

The Angel lurches after her, tripping a little over the bodies of its dead predecessors, the body of the Judge that Rook killed. On her next step back she jars right into a tree trunk, hands groping backwards to steady her. (She's in the Bliss, she has to be.)

"Please," Faith sounds  _so sad_ that Rook can almost taste it in her own mouth. "Please, you have to believe me, I can help you."

All her strength gathered for flight, all her senses alert for an ambush, Rook doesn't listen.

Which comes in the form of a faint creak in the trees behind her. Dropping to the ground among the dead plants and broken branches, Rook's breath leaves her in a rush.

An arrow whistles overhead.

_Chosen_.

Rook hurls herself up and charges with the speed of desperation. (She can fight this.) Honing in on the red splotch of the hunter's ski-mask. A second arrow just misses. And then he's right in front of her, hampered by the weight of the bow and scrambling for a third arrow.

She hits him head-on, slamming him into the tree at his back.

Stunned, flailing, he slides down among the roots. Rook draws her knee up and stomps down as hard as she can. His head hits the trunk at a bad angle and his neck crunches, broken.

Looking over her shoulder for Faith, hands grabbing at the peggie's quiver, Rook takes a second to spot the Angel. It's lying flat on its back, an arrow sticking up from its chest. And it doesn't get up again.

She stops.

Purposefully or not, the Chosen had just saved her.

But not necessarily for long.

She unclips the radio from his belt, listening intently for anything that sounds like an alarm code.

But there's nothing besides some chatter about transport and patrols. She looks down at the dead Chosen with faint pity. He must have decided to seize the moment rather than risk waiting for back-up.

Not a bad decision, Rook thinks as she slumps down beside him, but not the best one.

"Should've walked away," she mutters to him wearily. "Best thing for everyone."

A dull disappointment in them both creeps over her. One mistake, and she's back to fighting violence with violence again. Base instincts for survival overcoming all else.

(But he's not really dead, she's not really alive.)

Hefting the Chosen's body over her should, his weight forcing each step down into the dirt, she heads for the cliff.

His bulk forces her head at an angle, the pockets on the front of his tactical vest digging into her shoulder.

But she pauses before dumping him, staring sightlessly at the drop into the rocks below.

The grey-white camouflage of his coat chafes against her ear.

Slinging him to the ground with a heavy  _thwump_ , Rook blinks down at him.

His dead eyes stare past her, up at the branches and broken sky. His face is almost totally obscured by the red ski-mask. The black cross of the Project stamped over his mouth.

Dead, but unmarked. Rook studies him, takes in the condition of his uniform, the size of his boots.

Angels in the woods hunting her, and Chosen on the roads hunting them.

Fuck it, she thinks, yanking the ski-mask off him with a twist of anger.

(He looks strong.)

It takes a few minutes to unwrap all his layers. When she's got him mostly naked, she remembers enough civilization to press his eyelids closed. Pointless gesture, but it makes her feel a little better about what comes next.

Which is that she heaves his scarred, tattooed body over the side of the cliff (like an Angel now) and tosses her last piece of bait down after him.

Hopefully, the predators that find him first will be the non-human variety.

Skin prickling in the chill mountain air, she unlaces her boots, unbuttons her pants, and starts to strip down.

God save the Whitetails: she's got a real bad plan.

* * *

 Poking through Larry Parker's pantry, John finds no trace of genius among the canned soups and crystallized honey.

Spitefully, he slams the cupboards shut.

This, he thinks, turning a slow circle in the kitchen with a judgmental air,  _this_ is what comes of refusing the Father, the Project, and all his own generous efforts.

The place is a disaster: tools all over the floor, empty pizza boxes and wine bottles on the counter, beer cans in the sink. Strands of Christmas lights sway in the breeze through the open doors, tangled across the ceiling. Parker 'Labs' has more in common with a dive bar than a proper laboratory.

John fastidiously fails to imagine why anyone would want to come to a place like this.

Gifted the Deputy might be, but she is clearly in desperate need of the Father's guidance.

There's a workbench right next to where Larry prepares his  _food_. It's a miracle none of his guests lacerate their insides with screws and metal shavings. John runs his fingers lightly over the serrated blade of hacksaw, and feels vastly disappointed that Parker is not at home.

Disgraced as he might be, Larry's scientific background made him of interest to the Project. And John, of course, was personally invested in having a chat with him about their mutual acquaintance the Deputy.

Looking around the living space, he can see traces of her presence. A blanket crumpled by the back door, covered in dog-hair. A pair of bowls under the table, traces of old meat in one. A sturdy, half-chewed stick wedged into the couch cushions.

That dog, thinks John with a twinge of disgust. She treats it better than a child. Even her former friends in the resistance have gotten less care and attention out of her than that filthy animal.

But at least it proves him right.

She was here, and she stayed long enough to leave tokens of herself behind.

John kicks a wrench across the floor, irritable.

Night before last, the Deputy had looked at him with firelight reflecting in her eyes and said,

_Want to talk about the aliens?_

Whatever lies Larry has been stuffing her with, John will have to purge from her.

Jaw tight with dissatisfaction, he sweeps a stack of papers from the desk. All his time and energy poured into saving sinners, and they would  _still_ rather listen to a lunatic stuttering about Martians than hear the truth with the power to save their souls. Anger claws in his throat, sharp and jagged.

He's not about to give up.

_Something_ had drawn the Deputy to this miserable shrine of tabloid delusion. The attraction might elude him, but she had come here for a reason. Joseph had named Larry Parker to the Project's shortlist for a  _reason_ , and John's not leaving until he understands what it means. He won't make the mistake of dismissing wisdom for a second time, even if it is coming from the mouth of a fool like the Deputy.

With renewed determination, John sets out to turn Larry Parker's lab upside down.

* * *

Rook takes stock of herself as she walks down to the road. Hungry, thirsty, her feet sliding uncomfortably in her commandeered boots: she's physically fine. The weird thing is that she seems to be mentally alright too.

There's not sparkle to her vision, no red-blue smearing that would make this a Bliss-trip. The aches in her legs and back do not magically soothe away in that sweet aroma therapy. Sunlight slanting through the evergreens does not make her want to fling herself to her knees and weep in rapture.

Her eyes hurt a little, but that's the lack of sleep, and her nose is not at all itchy. The strongest thing she can smell is the dirt and sweat of her stolen uniform. Which isn't that different from how she usually smells.

And  _smell_ , shit, Boomer. Where is Boomer?

"Boomer!" she calls, not caring who might hear. "C'mere, boy!"

But there's no answering bark, no happy patter of dog-paws in the bushes. Just the creak of branches overhead, the far-off shriek of a hawk.

She whistles through her teeth, then gets the actual dog-whistle out and blows through it.

But Boomer doesn't return.

(He's fine, he's fine. The Judge just scared him off a long way, that's all.)

She'll have to do this one on her own.

Rook adjusts the heavy, unfamiliar gloves with an unhappy frown. But the plan is easy. Grab a vehicle, gets some wheels on her and  _go_. Boomer will catch up eventually, he always does.

(So do the Seeds, but she'll outrun them yet.)

Sliding down a rocky incline, scree and pebbles turning under her palms and legs as she knocks them loose, Rook makes a lot of noise getting down to the road. Got to stop leaving obvious trails like that, she thinks in passing, too caught up in her own momentum to slow down.

Dust plumes up from her feet as she reaches the road to the Chalet.

 She does  _not_ want to go past the gully of not-so-dead Angels. But the only other way out is the long path around the back of the ridge.

Straight through the cult's training grounds.

Rook would rather risk the wrath of the Angels than gamble on her ability to make it one hour without committing some peggie crime that gets her excommunicated. (Which, in Joseph's church, is likely to involve something more severe than the book, the bell, and the candle.) So past the gully she'll go. Once she hits the road around Silver Lake, she's free to roam anywhere the cult is not.

Plodding downhill, she tries to look on the bright side. She's still alive. Boomer is too, she knows it.

And in a place as deadly as the Whitetails, that's really all you can ask.

Then she hears the distinctive rattle of a truck on the road behind her, and wonder despairingly how she could have jinxed herself so soon.

It takes all her survival instincts to squash her  _other_ survival instincts and not dive headlong into the bushes.

( _I dunno what it was, Jacob-herald-sir, there was just_ something _suspicious about the newbie. Weakness, sir, we could smell it so we killed her. For the Father!)_

Rook keeps marching down the road. Not looking over her shoulder as she hears the truck slow down. Not pausing, even when it pulls alongside. Not stopping when the engine switches off and a door slams behind her.

"Lieutenant!" a woman calls out. "Uh, lieutenant?"

Extremely reluctant, hoping that this stranger is talking to someone  _else_ on the empty road, Rook turns around.

The peggies, of which there are too many, are all hanging off of the truck with a range of expectant and vaguely hopeful expressions. None of them are Chosen, just regular foot-soldiers with white uniforms and assault rifles. (Yay.)

"Forgive me for disturbing you, lieutenant." The driver, a middle-aged woman who had hopped out to chase after Rook on foot, snaps a salute.

Hesitantly, Rook copies it. Holds it for what turns out to be too long because all the peggies in the truck - one in the passenger seat and two perched up in the truckbed - scramble to salute as well. Surprised, Rook drops her arm.

The peggies drop their arms.

(This is going to be tougher than she thought.)

"We," the peggie spokeswoman shifts her weight, looking a little less confident now, "My squad and I - uhm, wanted to ask you to look at something, lieutenant. If you have a moment."

Rook has all the time in the world. They all do. In a fucked up  _oh God we're all gonna die_  sort of way.

"Sure," she agrees, voice rough and unpracticed, because she can't think of a good excuse for fleeing the scene this very second.

(don't shoot them,  _don't shoot them_ )

"We've got it in the back, ma'am. Follow me."

Rook trails after the peggie with a deep sense of misgiving. (She can't shoot them, she's out of ammo ... but they have plenty of guns, she should grab a gun she really should.) As they get closer, features resolving out of the messy hair and vaguely dirty faces into distinct individuals, Rook starts to realize that they're all younger than they first looked.

Green recruits, nervous and twitchy, and their fucking babysitter leading her right to them.

"We heard several bursts of gunfire from the north hill while doing routine exercises by the water," the peggie squad-leader reports in a terribly official way as they round the back of the truck. "When a third burst occurred, approximately seven minutes after the first, I sent two brothers to investigate."

Reasonable decision. Rook nods in agreement.

Some of the tension leaves the peggies now that they've got a 'lieutenant' listening to their concerns. Which seem to have something to do with a tarp-covered lump down in the bed of the truck and if they ask Rook to give them a pat on the back for killing a civilian she swears she will come out of retirement to put the  _real_ fear of the Collapse in them.

"This is what we found," Squad-leader announces dramatically (a side-effect of exposure to the Seed family) as one of the others pulls back the tarp.

They all stare at Rook anxiously as she stares (anxiously) down at a dead wolf.

A dead, half-skinned wolf and fuck if it isn't the injured Judge she never had a chance to finish stripping of its pelt.

She can't think of anything to say.

( _It was me, I did it_ , maybe?)

All she can do not to run straight back into the woods because this is wrong, this is so wrong, she hasn't had a conversation with a peggie that went two ways before.

Having them wait politely for her to speak is just plain  _unnatural_. The clouds will rain blood and birds with sing in backwards tongues, she can feel it coming. Snake will cavort with hare and the bison will fuck the bull. Or whatever.

But as seconds pass and nothing apocalyptic happens, Rook realizes that she's going to have to give them something. Before they start asking the hard questions. (Like,  _where's the real lieutenant and who in the name of the Father is this asshat?_ ) She looks at the dead wolf for inspiration, but it remains as indisputably dead as it has been since she killed it.

"Any sign of who shot him?" she manages finally, resisting the urge to cross her fingers for luck.

"No," the leader reports, which is a great relief. "But we found four dead Angels in the area. One of them looked like it crawled there from the gully, but the others appear to have been killed on-site. We burned their bodies, as per the new orders, but this seemed unusual to-" the woman shoots a glance at one of her younger teammates, then squares her shoulders and says staunchly, "-me as squad leader, ma'am. I ordered the others to help me load it up for examination."

What follows is an uneasy silence that Rook lets hang for a long minute - enough that the peggies start shifting nervously again - until she abruptly realizes that they're waiting for her to render judgment.

"Unusual, yes," she chokes out, because this whole fucking disaster is real fucking  _unusual._

But the peggies seem happy enough that she agrees with their feelings. Sort of.

One of them, a girl with the Eden's Gate cross branded angrily on her forehead, leans over the side of the truck and demands, "Does it look like Whitetail work to you, lieutenant?"

"No," Rook answers flatly. ( _It was me, I did it._ )

The squad murmurs in disappointment. Except for their leader, who has the good sense to look relieved. That's why she gets to be in charge, Rook guesses. But maybe it's fraternizing with the enemy to think these things.

An uncomfortable question: is Rook no one's enemy, or everyone's enemy now?

"We've spotted hunters in the hills to the north-west," says the squad-leader, breaking Rook out of a downward spiral. "I know they're not considered high-risk trespassers, but with you permission, I'd like to double-up my people during patrols. As a precaution."

"Yes, do that," Rook agrees. It's a good idea.

But peggies asking her for approval, what's the world coming to?

She gets a grateful bobble-head chorus of 'thank you, ma'am' from them all. Even though it was  _their idea_ in the first place. Clearly, she's underestimated the powers of her disguise. Rook feels warmed at the evidence of a plan working. She should succeed more often.

The youngest peggie, a boy barely old enough to attempt the traditional cult beard _,_  asks nervously, "Should we put the Judge with the others for examination?"

"Yes," Rook declare confidently, even though she has no clue what she's doing. (Leadership!) "Put it with the others." Then, because she can't keep her mouth shut, "And inform the appropriate authorities!"

There's a short, awkward pause in which Rook realizes that  _she_ was the appropriate authority and, having already informed her, none of them quite knows how to interpret her order.

"Er, yes, lieutenant," the leader, a sensible woman Rook is now convinced deserves a promotion, smoothes things over. "Would you like to ride with us to the Chalet?"

Rook, wrong-footed and acting on reflex, says, "Thanks."

And then she could fucking kill herself. These aren't resistance fighters looking at her all shiny-eyed and hopeful, these are  _cultists_ who think she's one of them. The last free deputy, and here she is gift-wrapping herself for them like a  _smite thy sinner with a fiery vengeance_ wet-dream.

Too late to take it back, though.

The squad leader is already marching around to the front of the truck, and the peggie in the passenger seat sides out with a little nod of respect to Rook. Left with no choice but climb into the cab, Rook takes his place and tries not to draw attention to the fact that she just accidentally slammed her coat in the door. The spare peggie hops up in back with the others and the engine revs to life, jouncing them all on bad springs as they take off down the road.

It's unbearably casual.

Rook buckles her seatbelt and prepares to endure her most awkward abduction experience yet. If she's lucky, maybe a bison will run into the road and they'll all have to bail out before anyone can start making small-talk.

But then the leader, who must have been some kind of saint before she joined the local murder-cult, turns on the radio.

Rook could cry in gratitude.

She tries to stay low-key with her relief, though. (Still tugging furtively on the tail of her coat to work it free from the door.)

The rest of the peggies seem happy enough to listen to music rather than talk, humming along to the hymns that play 24/7 on the peggie station. A sense of doom sneaks back up on Rook. This is fate: to be hijacked by peggies, intentional or not, and carried off to the music of a church choir.

Passing by the bridge over the gully, she tries not to smell like fear when she sees that the purge of the Whitetail's Angels is still going on. The tactical vest weighs down on her shoulders as her muscles tense. But nothing happens. The Angels remain blessedly silent in their graves and the truck drives on.

Someone in the back starts to drum their hands in time to the music, and then they all start stomping their feet and singing along in three-part harmony. Join the barbershop quartet of the apocalypse, Rook thinks, Go places, disagree with people, shoot them in the face.

Rook stares out the windows longingly as the road branches off in other directions, but isn't quite desperate enough to try jumping out. If she just sits still and doesn't do anything stupid, they'll never pierce her cunning disguise.

(She is going to  _die_.)

The worst thing, Rook reflects as they pull up to the gate outside the Chalet, is that she too knows all the lyrics to  _Now He's Our Father_. She could have sung along if she wanted to.

Doesn't mean she's going to stick around and ask for a choir book, though.

"Father keep you, lieutenant," the peggies call cheerfully after her as she stumbles out of the truck.

"You too," Rook replies automatically, then flees into the bushes.

She can  _feel_ them saluting her behind her back.

* * *

John's divine sign comes in a series of numbers scratched into the chalkboard hanging by Larry's bedroom door, deep grooves scored into the material of the board itself.

Brimming with excitement, John traces them with two fingers.

He  _recognizes_ this sequence. It's what the Deputy was muttering in her sleep, again and again until John couldn't fail to hear it. There had been a good deal of nonsense mixed into her midnight revelations - radon and taxidermy and red skies - but these are the same numbers progressing in the same order. Now, arranged in their proper format, he sees that they make a simple equation.

24+31+30+1=86

A bright flare of satisfaction chases away the last of his frustration.

It had taken strength to carve this, dedication and patience to the purpose. The Deputy's work, he's certain. The shape of the numerals is too rough and angular to match the tidy curl of Larry's handwriting. No, something this frustrating and oblique could only be the invention of the Deputy.

She had left the knife too, he sees, stabbed into the floor below the chalkboard.

He coaxes it out, kneeling down and wiggling it in small circles until he can pull it free.

It's a slender little throwing knife, of the variety popular throughout the fence-posts and dart-boards of the county. John rubs his thumb up the handle, pressing his fingertips against the little hole at the top. Testing the blade with the flat of his palm, he finds it dull.

Not his kind of knife.

He keeps it anyway. The Deputy might want it returned. A smile curves his mouth. He'll do his utmost to see she gets it back, sharp and clean.

Until then, there's a little mental exercise he'd like to try.

Sitting back against the wall, the chalkboard hanging over his head, knife twirling in his fingers, John takes a look at the world from the Deputy's angle.

The doors, the floor, the legs of chairs and the scatter of tools in the kitchen.

A sudden rush of understanding assaults him.

He's been down here before.

Hiding in corners, holding himself small and quiet. Cowering from the enormity of his own sins, afraid of the dark and flinching from the light. His thumb finds yesterday's bruises under his shirt, stroking them thoughtfully. If the Deputy is lost, as John was once lost, then it's all the more important that she be brought to confess immediately.

Stretching to his feet, casting one last glance at the equation on the chalkboard, he straightens the line of his coat and strides for the door.

She might see what's coming, but she has yet to grasp the part that the Project plays in redeeming the world from self-destruction.

He can change that. John pockets the knife, confidence restored. Every sinner has the chance to return to Eden, as decreed by the Father. Liars like Burke and Larry Parker might lead the weak astray, but John offers them the choice to come willingly home.

And if the Deputy keeps resisting, well, that's what confession is for. John's more than ready to rise to the challenge of discovering her rightful place. They'll work at it together until the whole truth is laid bare.

"Pack all this up," he orders the guards waiting for him outside. "Take it to the sisters and brothers at the railyard, have them sort through it."

His people rush to obey him.

Brushing chalk-dust from the sleeve of his coat, John reflects on how best to dispose of his evening. There's much work waiting for him at the bunker, of course. He could fit in a quick confession or a couple of baptisms before dinner.

But, as he frets with the key around his neck, he feels full to bursting with the need to  _do_ something more. If his people cannot find the Deputy, and the resistance is still licking its wounds, then he'll go speak to someone who  _will_ talk to him.

Lips curling in a smile, John briefly toys with the idea of letting Jacob know he's coming for dinner.

But that would ruin the surprise.

And it's always so delightful when family drops in unannounced.

* * *

Leaning against a tree, Rook scratches at where the bark pokes through the back of her ski-mask.

The loose red weave pulls hot and irritating over her mouth. Blowing out a breath, she tries not to let it distract her from coming up with a plan that won't end in disaster. Improvising, obviously, has landed her in trouble again. She might be able to take the Chalet with a knife and whatever firepower she can scavenge, but an army of Angels requires something really big.

Or, the way Rook is looking at it from her perch on the cliff above Langford Lake, something relatively small.

There's a couple of ATVs parked down there. Itching at where the borrowed belt pinches her waist, Rook considers them. An ATV has a lot of advantages for the deputy in need of a hasty exit. Unfortunately, these ones have a lot of cultists running drills a stone's throw away from where they're parked.

Not to mention the Angels shoved in prison pens by the lakeshore.

A bad feeling shivers down Rook's spine just looking at them, and she has to check every few seconds just to be sure that they're not all staring back at her. Hands reaching through the bars, mouths whispering Faith's lies in Faith's voice. Rook hunches her shoulders.

She wants no part of this. She just wants to leave.

A helicopter buzzes overhead, the high pitch of its engine whining as it lands on the far side of the Chalet.

Grimacing, Rook leaves the cliff's edge.

The ATVs are faster, but the trucks are safer.

She's trying to be  _safe_.

Giving up on the lake for now, Rook kicks stones up the path to the training center. There's food and water inside, and boots that fit better, but she hasn't worked up the nerve (desperation) to venture in yet. There are a  _lot_ of peggies going in and out of those doors with an air of purpose that she finds alarming.

Coming up the slight rise to the training yard, she sees even more of them milling around and shouting to each other.

And then she gets a good look at why and jumps right off the path into the bushes.

That's  _John_ rounding the corner of the building, smoothing down his hair and tweaking the lapels of his coat. Perversely happy as he accepts the adulation of the crowds awaiting him. Crushing her hopes of escape under his heel with every step.

And then Jacob stumps out of the Chalet to meet him, and Rook realizes that at this point she should seriously worry for her life more than her freedom.

Blending deeper in the shade, she presses her back into a tree and wills herself to become one with nature. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those helpful peggies totally would have dropped Rook off anywhere she wanted. They even would have let her commandeer their truck, no questions asked. You had options, Rook! (She had options.) Also, the magnopulsar was sitting under John's nose the whole time and he refused to notice. Seriously, I kept trying to write about him looking at it and he just would not play along. So much for foreshadowing.


	7. small favors, good deeds

Rook learns the hard way that the trainees around Langford Lake are unsupervised.

"It's brother John!" one of them enthuses, mostly to Rook. "I heard it on the radio when the sergeant was called away! Brother John has come to bless us!"

"Is that true, lieutenant?"

"Did you see him yourself, ma'am, is he here?"

"Do you think the Father sent him? Is it," the last speaker casts a furtive look over her shoulder at the pen of captive Angels, "Is it because of the culling? Please, lieutenant, do you have any new to share?"

Leaning back from the excited recruits crowding around her - all of whom seem torn between terror and excitement at a herald's arrival - Rook experiences a moment of visceral regret for all the choices she's made today. Chief among them is this botched attempt to steal an ATV while everyone was distracted.

She'd come down the climbing wall right into this nest of baby peggies (some of whom are, technically, older than she is) and now she can't get away. When she tries to push through them, they just  _follow_ her. Too awed at the possibility she might lead them to John to care that she outranks them.

(Dammit.)

The ATVs are  _right there_ by the placid green-blue waters of the lake and, proving that she's learned nothing so far, she makes the risky decision to double-down on reaching them.

With a deep breath through the mask, air pulling the eye-slit out of shape across her nose, she straightens up to her full height and projects from the gut.

"Break time's over!" Her voice booms out with a confidence she does not feel. (What would Pratt say?) "Back to work, probies!"

They shrink back, chastened, and mutter to each other.

Looking around at their unhappy faces, Rook remembers then that all of them have guns. And she has ... her knife, and whatever the dead Chosen had in his pockets when she took his uniform. (A stick of dynamite.) But who would dare question a direct order from a superior officer around here?

"Uhm, but lieutenant," stammering, one of the youngest recruits (he must be new, oh shit, he can't be showing this kind of insubordination in Jacob's camp, fuck fuck) has the misplaced courage to complain, "We're scheduled to take lunch. We were hoping - that is, Herald John is here-"

Shit. Why didn't she just tell them to go say hello. Except John probably stabs people as a friendly greeting and what would Jacob even  _do_ to recruits off-task? She can't send them up there, they'll die. But if he keeps questioning her she's going to have to - fuck - assert her dominance or something.

Fuck, she'll have to kill him to keep her cover.

"Wh-what I mean is," he flounders as his fellow initiates draw back like they expect him to get culled where he stands, "We spent all afternoon on the climbing wall. We're already an hour late for our meal. Sir - I mean, ma'am. Uh. _Lieutenant_. Could we-"

The important thing, Rook thinks very calmly as everyone stares horrified at this unfolding car-crash, The Important Thing is not to panic.

(She panics.)

"WAKE UP, soldier!" Lashing out, she grabs the stuttering kid by the shirt and drags him forward to bellow in his face. "We are Eden's Gate! We are mother nature's mother _fucking_ warriors and we will ADAPT to ANYTHING that bitch throws at us! Now get on those ropes and PREPARE yourself for the Great Collapse!"

"Yessir!"

Terrified, he tears himself away from her and practically flings himself up the wall.

"For the Father!" Rook shouts at the rest of them, pointing authoritatively.

"For the Father!" they affirm, stampeding to the ropes.

Rook pivots sharply on her heel and marches straight for the ATVs, her giant, borrowed boots stomping across the rocks.

A giant target on her back.

Stomach churning with anxiety, she has no idea what she just said. Fuck,  _always prepared_ are they the fucking boy scouts or something? They'll be lucky if they live to die at world's end.

(Her throat hurts.)

The ATVs are parked just a stone's throw away, under some trees. Hugging the rocky wall of the ridge, Rook keeps a wary eye on the cages full of Angels by the water. None of them get up to wail at her in Faith's voice, but she can see the Bliss fumes drifting around them. Breathing through her nose, she hurries for the vehicles before any more lost recruit, distressed fishermen, or severely confused cultists try to waylay her.

Nothing is more beautiful in her sight than the pair of ATVs when she reaches them.

There are even keys in the ignition. Thank anything holy, she's getting out of here. Rook hopes on and starts the engine.

It coughs, sputters, and dies.

Out of fuel.

They both are.

Rook puts her head down between the handlebars and punches the gas-tank in frustration. 

* * *

Jacob's first words to him in private are not very welcoming.

"Go away, John."

Already settling into the couch in the Chalet's office, John just leans back and tucks his hands behind his head. Pointedly not going anywhere.

"Nice to see you too, brother," he smiles, choosing to be amused rather than offended. "Your hospitality is, as always, beyond reproach."

Jacob leans in the doorframe and looks dour.

"Of course," John goes on because he doesn't believe in stopping, "I suppose I should be glad that you're not treating me as badly as you're treating those Angels out there." He gestures loosely at the window, where a row of arrow-riddled figures droops sadly from stakes. "Is that why you and Faith have been quarreling? She's never been the most ... conscientious of overseers, but I can't imagine she approves of using her charges for target practice."

For a long minute, Jacob scrutinizes him with an absolutely stoney-expression that has John raising his eyebrows.

"Sore subject?" he inquires curiously.

With a grunt that can only be interpreted as  _yes_ , Jacob deliberately looks away.

"What do you want, Johnny?"

"To talk about the Deputy," he answers promptly because he really, really does.

Jacob makes a dismissive sound, which is good because it means that he's not interested in acquiring the Deputy for his own purposes ... but also bad, because it means that he won't want to talk about it. And John desperately needs to share his thoughts with  _someone_.

"The Deputy has a place in the Project," he pushes. "We need to talk about what it is."

"Could've used a radio," Jacob grumbles, stumping over to the desk on the opposite side of the room. Pushing file-folders around and pretending he has better things to do. "Long-distance is their purpose, you know."

"Yes." John's smile is a bit too sharp to be entirely friendly. "They're also incredibly easy to ignore. So I thought, 'my dear brother Jacob was so kind as to visit  _me_ yesterday, it's only right that I return the favor!' And here I am."

"Wasting time."

Picking out a selection of papers, ignoring John's glare, Jacob taps them into a neat stack.

"Make yourself useful," he orders. "Then we can talk about your latest fixation."

"I do not have  _fixations_ -" John breaks off as the entire pile of papers gets dumped into his lap. "Oh, fine," he gives up, picking up a page and frowning at the numbers. "What's all this?"

Jacob's smile is faint, just barely there, and still far too present for John's comfort.

"Shipping manifests," he says ominously. "From your bunker."

John scowls, irritated.

It turns out, his people have developed an accounting problem. Not a malicious one, but between the depredations of the resistance and the stress of the coming Collapse, their record-keeping skills have proven subpar. Even worse, Jacob wants to seize this opportunity to restore order. To the paperwork, at least.

John remembers too late that this is why he prefers to play the host, rather than the guest. Jacob has a sad habit of roping him into work every time he visits. The tyrant. Fanning the papers out on the couch beside him, John heaves a put-upon sigh.

"Although there might be some pleasure in documenting our efforts - which have been mighty - I delegate these tasks for a  _reason_."

Said reason being that he simply hasn't the patience to micromanage every bushel and barrel that passes through his bunker.

Jacob lets out a snort that clearly communicates how deeply John's lack of oversight offends him.

And then he just  _leaves_ him  _alone_ in the empty office with no company and a mess of numbers to sort through.

Less than enthusiastic about getting stuck behind a desk, John grumpily buckles down to work. While his perfidious brother marches off to enjoy fresh air, exercise, and the terrorized obedience of his troops.

It's certain not how he  _intended_ to spend his afternoon.

Struggling to disentangle a shipment of apples from a shipment of shotgun shells, John grimly plots his revenge.

* * *

Hiding behind the Chalet's outhouse, lying on her belly in the bushes, Rook blows forlornly on her dog whistle. Her foot scrapes an uneasy groove in the dust. The shouts of peggies in the training yard rise loud and gleeful behind her. Extra zealous in the presence of two heralds. She can hear more of them arriving all the time, making the pilgrimage up the ridge and flooding the roads with traffic.

She wants one of those trucks.

Speed down the roads, get herself to Silver Lake and hide out on one of those little islands out in no man's land: that sounds about right. Do a little night-fishing, open a cold beer and play fetch with Boomer.

(If he ever returns.)

Tucking the whistle back into her pocket, Rook buries her face in her elbow.

The Chosen's mask clings, stifling in the still air.

She can't think clearly, lightheaded with hunger and thirst and the ever-present need to get out of here. But there are Angels in the woods, heralds in the Chalet, and peggies  _everywhere_. Boomer, on the other hand, is nowhere to be found.

He'll be back, she knows he will. They'll be free of this mess in no time. Curling up around her empty stomach, Rook tries to convince herself that storming the Chalet in a fit of hungry desperation is not going to call him back any sooner.

And that's when Jacob invades her little crisis of inaction.

Rook hears him coming before she sees him, tromping through the undergrowth like he owns the place. (He does.) Coming around the outhouse and heading straight for where she hides in the scattering of evergreens and bushes that provide the only real cover on this side of the ridge.

Hugging the dirt for dear life as he goes by, Rook tries to learn how to live without breathing.

He doesn't notice.

Picking out a tree not far away enough, he leans up with his back against the trunk. Feet kicking out a little as he relaxes into stillness.

Every muscle tensed, Rook twines her fingers into the roots of the bush to keep from leaping out.

( _do you know what the flight or fight reflex is, deputy_ )

She can hear him release a long breath, dog-tags jingling. Hidden under leaves and branches, she can't see anything above his knees, but she gets the feeling that he's just resting. At ease.

(Behind the outhouse: five-star patch of dirt, Jacob Seed approved hiding spot, ten out of ten, will not be coming back.)

Jacob does nothing.

She's too busy being terrified out of her goddam mind to appreciate the possibility that they're both avoiding John.

A long line of ants marches past the canvas sleeve of her coat. Rook doesn't dare blink at them, convinced Jacob will sense the vibration if she so much as disturbs an insect in his domain. The coat is wrapped uncomfortably around her hips, caught under her weight. She swallows dryly and wills her body to relax into the environment.

Nothing human here to find. Nothing but the wind in the leaves, a bird in the branches. A shadow of a cloud. (Death passing over.)

With all her attention fixed on him, ready to break the second he attacks, Rook almost jumps out of her skin when he finally moves.

The plastic  _click_ of his radio clip breaks the silence.

He speaks to it quietly, a low tone of warning she knows too well.

"You're running out of time."

"Please, Jacob," answers Faith, so faint over the speaker that Rook strains to eavesdrop. "The Father wants us to have patience."

"Hmh," Jacob snorts softly, the toe of one boot working slowly at a stone embedded in the dirt. "He tell you that in person?"

(Rook is willing to bet:  _no_. Joseph never deigns to appear except at his church these days. Too invested to go off-script from his visions.)

Faith hums through the radio, keeping a tight grip on the channel so that Jacob can't cut her off.

"I know it's hard for you to accept," she murmurs finally, "When things are out of your control. But there are some problems you need to let fix themselves. In time, everything will return to its proper path. Have faith."

"You think this is a problem that's going to go away on its own?" Jacob's tone rises on the question, then drops flat. "No. You have your deadline."

Faith matches his shift, going from dreamy to accusatory, "You're not being very understanding. Did I do something to you? Is that why you're being so heartless?"

(What fresh dysfunction is this? Watching Jacob angrily prying up a rock with his foot, Rook wishes they would take their family drama elsewhere. There's twigs poking into the back of her head. Rocks digging into her shins. Weird, uncomfortable feelings of apprehension sitting on her shoulders.)

"John's here. He doesn't know anything yet, but he'll find out. He'll let his feelings cloud his judgment and then, well," Jacob's threats are the soft, dead brush of rabbit fur, "You know what happens then."

"I didn't think you were this cruel," whispers Faith in disappointment. "Is this what family is to you? Just more people to control?"

"Tick tock, Faith," Jacob signs off with a warning finality. "Tick tock."

He stands for a minute, the woods quiet quiet around him. Then he viciously kicks the rock away. Rook flinches as it hits a nearby tree trunk with a hard  _thunk_. It bounces off into the ferns.

Fortunately, he doesn't catch the little rustle of her surprise.

Clipping the radio back to his belt with a sharp  _snap_ , he heads back for the Chalet.

Rook can smell him as he goes by, a whiff of gunpowder and metal. The inside of an ammo crate. Primed to explode.

His boots go  _shuf-shuf_ through the undergrowth, firm and steady, until the sound fades into the distance.

She lets out a slow breath, and doesn't get up.

Fuck, if she'd had a gun. She could have ended him. No more music-box, no more red, no more  _army of one and only_. (For a little while, anyway.) But she knows better than to try to take Jacob unarmed. There's no such thing as equal footing with him. He'll beat you with the short end of the stick, and then the long, and then both ends together just in case the point somehow escaped you.

Bitter, Rook wonders what he'd do if he found out how useless it all is. Sacrifice and slaughter didn't mean a goddam thing in the end. Would it make any difference at all if he knew?

Down with her in the dirt, the ants march down down underground. Dark, beady little bodies near-invisible against the dirt. Running this way and that, storing up food and digging tiny tunnels all across the face of the Earth. (How many ants will the Collapse wipe out?)

Resting her head on her elbow, glancing up at the sky, she decides that she'll just wait until dark.

It can't make her situation any worse, and it might make it easier for Boomer to find her.

Better than trying to go inside the Chalet to find truck keys and then running into John and then being forced to flee from wolves in boots that are sizes too big and a coat that keeps flapping around her legs. How do the Chosen move so quietly in with giant camouflage tarps hanging off their shoulders? There must be some trick to it.

Stretching her fingers out to let the ants run over the tops of the gloves, she settles in to contemplate the really important questions in life.

The dryness of her throat and the grumble of hunger in her gut are old enemies that she ignores just as surely as she ignores the Seeds up in the Chalet. Maybe, if she leaves them alone, Jacob and Faith will argue each other to death and John and Joseph will just disappear with the Blissed-out murder creatures and all the happy citizens of Hope County will ride merrily off into the sunset waving guns and flags.

(problems that fix themselves)

The westering sun shines warm through the branches covering her and, without making a conscious decision on the matter, Rook's eyes slip close and she dozes off.

* * *

"There!" John practically throws the clipboard at Jacob when he  _finally_ returns. "Unless you have another checklist lurking in a drawer somewhere - which I absolutely refuse to believe - we are done for the day."

Jacob grunts as he catches it, papers crinkling as he fumbles a little.

Surprised at this less than graceful display, John loses track of the righteous tirade he was about to unleash.

It's been hours since they last spoke and, in the red light of sunset, Jacob looks ... tired.

"When was the last time you _slept?_ " John demands, all his indignation channeling straight into concern. "Don't tell me you're trying to live off caffeine again. I don't care what you did in the army, it's not healthy. Man cannot live on coffee alone. Especially not that instant powder you've sadly mistaken for a proper blend. I included a selection of dark and medium roasts in the last shipment that I think you'll enjoy. And I  _know_ it was delivered, I checked the manifest. It's not much, but the beans will last for-"

"I got the coffee." Jacob cuts him off. "Thank you."

John beams.

"Now go away."

His smile transforming into a scowl, John throws up his hands in exasperation. Maybe if he leaves them in the air, he'll be less tempted to reach over and throttle his poor, exhausted,  _ungrateful_ brother. The chair wobbles underneath him, unsteady.

"Really, is this anyway to treat the sibling who, out of the goodness of his own heart, moved mountains of paperwork for you today?"

"You cleaned up your own mess." Gruffly, Jacob strides around the desk to loom over him. "Good job. You want a pat on the back or something before you go?"

He reaches out and ruffles a heavy through John's  _hair_ in an obnoxious way that he knows he despises.

Scrambling out of the chair and out of reach, John snaps, "Don't try to offend me into leaving."

"Wouldn't have to if you could take a hint about not overstayin your welcome."

"Please." He uses his reflection in the window to smooth his hair down, dignity restored. "You haven't even fed me."

"Don't wantcha followin me home."

"Fortunately," John raises his voice a little, smiling with false cheer at his brother's reflection, "I have taken steps to rectify that oversight."

Suspicious, Jacob narrows his eyes, trying to guess just what's been arranged behind his back.  _Now_ he regrets leaving John to his own devices. But it's too late. Wheels are already in motion.

"I thought your soldiers could do with a little morale boosting," John says innocently, turning around to witness the annoyance working over Jacob's face in person. "So I've arranged dinner for everyone here. Killing the fattened calf, so to speak. We could have a group prayer after, maybe a reading from the Book. I hope you don't mind."

"I  _mind_ , Johnny."

"Then you should have come back sooner and said so."

Unexpectedly, without any real pressure brought to bear, Jacob caves. Heaving out a sigh, he slouches down into John's chair and rubs at his face with one hand. He doesn't even look mad, just worn down and old. Which is not ... exactly what John was aiming for. He deflates without resistance, losing steam.

A little sliver of remorse pricks at him.

Jacob looks so very weary.

Something's amiss with his brother. A worry eating at the corner of his mind, distracting him. It can't be the Whitetails, he wouldn't shy away from owning that. John fusses with his hair absently, gears turning.

"You would tell me," he does  _not_ ask, "if something were wrong."

He would, wouldn't he?

Almost instantly, Jacob pulls himself back together. All trace of weakness boxed back up and the lid nailed shut. But it's there, John can see it now, lurking in the tight lines around his eyes.

" _Jacob_."

"Stop your fussing." Jacob shrugs him off, promising, "You'll be first to know, if there's anything to tell."

Far from reassured, John chokes down several cutting remarks.

The set of Jacob's jaw tells him that nothing he says now will get through.

But instead of giving up, John becomes all the more committed to his plans for the evening. Some secret trouble is weighing on Jacob's mind. Which makes John's presence here all the more serendipitous. Relieving the cares of a troubled soul is his calling. He rubs at one wrist. After the Collapse, then he'll have his turn to rest.

Until then, there's yet more work to do.

He straightens the cuffs of his jacket in a little show of impatience. Jacob didn't decide to end this conversation,  _he_ did.

"Well then, if you're quite finished chatting, I have dinner arrangements to make."

"Now isn't a good-"

"Jacob," he breaks in with utter, heartfelt sincerity, "This could be the last time we see each other. Just ... let me have this. Let  _yourself_ have this."

He can be ruthless too.

Finally, he gets a shrug in reply.

"if you insist."

"Yes!" John grins, bouncing up on his toes. "Leave everything to me. Dinner will be in a couple of hours, and  _yes,_ I expect you to attend. Who knows, you might even enjoy yourself."

Jacob grumbles, hiding behind the clipboard and making a show of going over John's numbers. He won't find any mistakes, but he's welcome to try. Perhaps it will put him in a better frame of mind.

Freshly determined, John leaves the office.

"Oh," he pops his head back in, remembering an important detail, "I'd be grateful if you could hold off burning that heap of corpses you think I don't know about. I don't want the stench putting anyone off their food."

"Bodies rot, you know," Jacob mutters to his clipboard.

"Yes, well, Angels are full of the fragrance of Bliss. I'm sure it all cancels out. just wait a few hours before you fill the air with more smoke, won't you?"

Jacob scowls.

"That's not an answer." He's learned from bitter experience not to proceed without direct acknowledgement of the agreement. "Yes or no?"

"You gonna leave if I say no?"

John just smiles.

" _Fine_. Tell the burn team to hold off until midnight."

"Perfect!"

Fingers twitching, John's smile grows wide and false as he walks away.

He shouldn't have won that easy. Any of it. Jacob never relinquishes arguments with so little fight. He's distressed by something.

More importantly, he  _lied_ about it to John.

And thought he could get away with it, which is just a pathetic display of overconfidence.

Smile gone sharp, John begins collecting a group of willing hands to help rearrange the training yard into something better suited to his own purposes.

First, he's going to make sure that his brother sits down to eat a full meal and, heaven help him, relaxes a little. Then he's going to hold him over hot coals until he shares the burden weighing so heavy on his shoulders.

Maybe once he's less oppressed by his own troubles, he'll spare some attention for  _John's_ concerns.

* * *

Evening falls soft over the mountains, the brief light of sunset fading into bands of pale yellow and deepening blue. Still hidden behind the outhouse, Rook stirs and stretches with a crackle of twigs and leaves. Aching from too much time spent on the ground, she rolls her shoulders and cricks her neck. She feels better for taking a dirt-nap. Despite the growling of her empty stomach.

Miraculously, no one had stumbled over her and demanded to know why she was lying down on the job.

(Or tried to loot her body, thinking she was dead.)

Sliding her fingers beneath the mask, she rubs her nose.

A dog barks behind her. Shooting upright, showering twigs and leaves in every direction, she looks wildly around.

"Boomer?"

She stumbles out of cover, legs tingling as they take her weight. A second bark leads her to spot his salt-and-pepper coat in the shadows of the outhouse.

"Boomer!"

He barks again, ears flicking forward and back. He doesn't come to greet her. Dancing from foot to foot in confusion over how much she looks and smells like a peggie. Stripping a glove off hurriedly, she holds out her hand for him to sniff.

"Sh sh. It's me, boy."

Cautiously, he licks her fingers.

"Really me," Rook promises, kneeling down and letting his snuffle her face through the mask.

His tail begins to wag.

"Where'd you go?" she tries to scold, but she's too busy hugging him for it to mean anything. "Where were you?"

Whining deep in his chest, he lets her hold on for as long as she needs.

She pulls away after a long moment.

"Come on, boy." Getting to her feet, a warm feeling spreading through her, she pats him fondly. "Let's see what we've got."

Heading for the nearest vantage point, she takes in the view from the ridge.

Sometime while she was spacing out, the day turned into a warm, beautiful evening.

In the summer dusk, Hope County spreads out wide open and inviting. A place to come home to. Rook looks down on it quietly, breathing in the scents of spruce and woodsmoke. A lone star glows on the horizon, bright over dark mountain peaks. Answering flickers of light down below as the hills bloom with bonfires.

Gently, she rubs Boomer behind his floppy ear.

"Gonna be okay, boy," she lies to him. "Just need to get off this ridge. Then we'll see about getting that fish, yeah?"

He  _whuffs_ gustily and leans against her leg.

But, looking down at the lights of trucks and the white uniforms on the roads below, Rook feels incredibly doubtful.

There are a lot of cultists headed their way.

Behind her, the Chalet thrums with light and activity. Drawing every peggie for miles like moths to Bliss. She can hear them celebrating joyfully around the fires. An overlapping blend of laughter and prayers, talking and song.

Rook pulls at her combat vest uneasily.

She can't get caught now. It would ruin her  _days not captured by Jacob Seed_ record, which is at an all time high of:  _not since the second Collapse, sucker_. She has no desire to run into John again either.

Now that Boomer's back, all she needs is a getaway ride.

"One more try?" she asks him, tugging back on the heavy glove.

He yips, ready to follow her anywhere.

Which makes her next job harder than it should be.

"Stay," she orders.

He sits, but a whine strains in his throat.

"I know, boy." Her fingers run through his coat, gentle. "No one will bother you if you don't bother them. But-"

She's just too scared of losing him until after the bombs hit.

" _Stay_."

he's the last thing she can keep safe, the only one who sticks with her through anything.

Ignoring the heartbreaking noise he makes as she leaves him, Rook moves quietly through the trees, eyeing the pale line of trucks parked alongside the road.

Risk a quick and dirty hot-wire, or risk searching for the keys?

Coming up on the Chalet, she blinks at what's been done to the place. The obstacle course out front has been dismantled, tires and wooden hurdles stacked off to the sides to make room for a pair of giant bonfires. People fill the space between them, light-edged silhouettes with rifles slung across their backs and ... paper plates and cups in their hands.

Shrugging off the oddness of cultists at an old-fashioned cook-out, Rook is pleased to note that the meat grilling over the firepits is definitely bovine and not at all human. Her stomach curls up longingly at the sight. For just a second she wonders if she dares stroll into the open for a free meal. (Jacob would mock her to death.) It's no Testy-Festy, but her mouth waters at the smell of food.

The peggies mingle with each other noisily, laughing and chattering with an air of reckless release that only comes after a period of extreme pressure. Nobody's dancing, but there is a circle of swaying figure around the smaller of the two fires. Holding hands and singing. Burning wood crackles, light flickering across the white and red and black of uniforms, casting deep shadows across faces and bodies. Sparks rising up into the darkening sky, warm and smokey.

(A ditch full of corpses just out of sight.)

Wherever he is, John must be loving it.

Surveying the festivities, Rook decides to take her chances retrieving the keys.

It'll be safer in the long run than fumbling around with wires in the dark, hoping no one notices her breaking their truck's window. Besides, she might have no guns, no ammo, and minimal back-up, but she does have one thing that the peggies will never expect: a stick of dynamite.

That, and a willingness to stand ridiculously close to explosions.

(Thanks Sharky and Hurk Jr.)

Between the two, she's pretty sure that she'll be able to distract anyone who gets close to piercing her disguise.

Taking a fortifying breath, she steps out onto the packed dirt of the yard.

Immediately, someone grabs her.

"Heralds bless you, sister!" a wild-haired woman says tearfully, clutching her by the shoulders. "The Father loves us!"

Rook makes a faint noise, like she's dying.

(On the inside.)

The grabby woman releases her and rushes off to assault someone else with misplaced affection.

Shivering, deeply disturbed, Rook forces her fingers to uncurl from around the knife in her pocket.

That was  _close_. No one will look kindly on her for getting stabby over a hug. Then again, with John around, maybe they're used to those kinds of accidents.

Shaking it off, she wades into the crowd.

Her shoulders pull in tighter and tighter as people clap each other (and her) on the back in heartfelt expressions of comaraderie. Cultists are so unbearably handsy.

Avoiding another hugger, she becomes entangled in a group reading passages from Joseph's book. Inwardly cringing away from a gleeful description of the fate of sinners in the fires of hell, she wishes this end-times cult would let her forget about how many times she's witnessed the end.

"-given the sign that we are ready each day to receive, that is the life of the chosen-"

In her rush to escape the Father's wisdom, she stumbles straight into a prayer-circle. They're terribly nice about it too, patting her on the shoulders and laughing at her 'eagerness' to join them. Backing away hastily, she almost crashes into another Chosen as he leaves the crowd around the servers portioning out food.

He has his mask peeled up from his face, firelight casting deep shadows over the scars on his face.

"Here, sister," he shoves his plate of food into her hands. "You look like you could use this."

"Th-thanks," Rook manages to reply like a human being.

"Blessings," he smiles, kind but perfunctory, already on his way back to the line for more.

Clutching her new plate, Rook wonders what on earth to  _do_ with it. (Pass it on?) Her stomach gurgles, loudly asserting its own plans for food.

Tempted, she hesitates. The plate is loaded high with thick slices of beef, fresh vegetables, and a little square of cornbread. It smells really good.

(She's  _right next_ to the Chalet.)

Impulsively, she pulls up the bottom of her mask. Tearing off a piece of meat, eyes darting around in case anyone identifies the bottom of her chin, she shoves the whole thing in her mouth and yanks the mask back down.

It's  _delicious_.

She can't help but slow down to savor the taste, tender and juicy in her mouth.

(A pavlovian response: the mountains make her hungry.)

Glancing around, she realizes that no one cares what she's doing. They're all too busy embracing this chance to unwind. Before morning brings them ever-closer to a life underground. Something inside Rook untwists, just a little. Tonight, she's just one more person drawn out of the dark by the light of a friendlier fire.

Leaving the stairs to the Chalet, she takes a sharp left and walks behind the dismantled remains of the obstacle course.

" _Sst_ ," she hisses, a whisper-shout. "Boomer."

He trots out of the dark, only a little uneasy at the presence of so many peggies.

Crouching behind a stack of tires, she feeds him slivers of meat from her plate while she eats.

Two bites in, she decides that this is the best thing that's happened to her in months. The vegetables are fresh, the meat is peppered just right. The cornbread has a little dollop of  _butter_ melting over the top.

She might tear up a little over it.

(Her cooking is normally constrained by a lack of aptitude, scarcity of supplies, and the looming threat of drive-by shooting.)

By the time she's cleared the plate, she feels more than ready to tackle her escape. Dine-and-dashing on two heralds kind of makes her want to grin. Especially in  _Jacob's_ front yard.

"Sit," she says over her shoulder to Boomer as she leaves the shelter of the tires. "Wait there, boy,"

Coughing out a few cornbread crumbs into her mask, she sets out to find water.

One quick drink, then she'll go after the keys that will undoubtedly be kept in a neatly organized locker inside.

As she dodges through the crowd - returning every elbow-clasp and blessing with an uncomfortable nod - a familiar voice rises over the noise.

"Brothers and sisters!" John shouts from the deck of the Chalet.

"Shhh!"

" _Quiet!_ "

"Brother John is speaking!"

Laughing, holding his palms up in false modesty at their enthusiasm, John steps up to the railing. Smoke drifts overhead, orange sparks leaping up to the night sky. Caught between two fires, in the middle of the crowd, Rook feels the people at her back pressing her forward in their eagerness to hear their herald.

"Is everyone enjoying their meal?" he calls.

"Yes!" the peggies shout back, joyful.

"Glad to hear it," John laughs again, teeth flashing in a wide smile. "While we're all here, I'd like to speak a few words to you about something that's been weighing on my heart."

Behind him, Rook spots Jacob leaning casually in the doorway. Watching his brother's speech with an inscrutable expression.

"Truth, brothers and sisters," John says, gesturing expansively, "Truth is the greatest gift we can give one another."

He paces across the deck, bright and vibrant, pulling them in with his energy and charm.

The best distraction she could have asked for.

Rook starts to slide her way sideways, aiming for the left of the Chalet.

"When we speak honestly, from the heart, we share ourselves. We set ourselves free from the malicious cares and worries that plague our minds. I urge each and every one of you to give the gift of truth-"

Abruptly, he pauses in the middle of a breath.

He holds it long enough that Rook, paranoid, follows the angle of his gaze-

Straight to Boomer. Who sits obediently on the edges of the light, clearly illuminated against the dark backdrop of the woods. His distinctive coat and droopy ear as good as a name-tag.

_shit shitshitshit_

Up on his stage, John pivots back into action.

"Sin hides in silence," he says, smoothly shifting gears. A harder bite to his words, a more dangerous smile trying to break free of his polished delivery. "Sin convinces us that we need to conceal ourselves." Planting his hands against the railing, sending Rook into a cold sweat beneath her own disguise, he scans the crowd. "But I urge you to look deep inside, beneath all the lies and all the accumulated filth. Look at your true self. Are you not tired of hiding?"

Oh, Rook thinks blankly, he's trying to  _talk_ her into turning herself in.

Of fucking course he is.

"Do you not ache in your very bones for salvation? Do not run from those who wish only to save you."

(Perversely, she suffers an impulse to pull her mask off and tell him where he can stick it.)

"You must speak out and say  _yes_ , I am here! Yes, I am found!"

That triggers little murmurs of agreement from his audience, calling back to him as they get into the spirit of the power of yes. Distracting him as he tries to track each affirmation. Convinced she'll lay down arms and surrender.

In a few minutes, when she doesn't, he'll lose his temper.

And things will really go to shit.

Easy as breathing, she lets the crowd push her farther away from the stage. Moving back and back and back by shifting her weight a little at a time. Other people push forward in response to the gaps she opens up. Widening the distance.

"I know, it can be frightening," appeals John, a wild glitter in his eyes as they pass over her again and again without realizing. "But courage, true courage, demands that we face our fears." He leans forward farther, low and persuasive in his certainty. "Do not let them sway you from seeking the forgiveness of the Father. You have been given a gift! Embrace it, as we will embrace you in the love of the Project."

Checking on Jacob, she finds him still lazily surveying the area. Unalarmed by the changing tenor of his brother's sermon. Rook keeps going.

So does John.

"The Collapse is coming. You know this. The Father has foreseen it as well. And it frightens me, I am not too proud to admit it."

What's the punishment for skipping out on a sermon, Rook wonders grimly as she freezes to avoid his gaze. Probably confession. Confession is the usual unhappy answer to the usual unhappy questions around here.

Like,  _what happened to my favorite shirt?_ and  _oh God, why is there so much blood?_

(The other answer to these questions is wolves.)

A snap of impatience cracks through John's voice as it carries across the yard, his eyes still restlessly searching. Paying special attention to the back of the crowd, but she's not there yet.

"This world is sinful. No matter what attachments you may have, what ... pangs you might feel at the prospect of the Collapse, there is no running. All must be cleansed. Only confession can lead to atonement, and there are no exceptions."

(They are rapidly approaching the moment he loses his temper, Rook can tell.)

Forget it, she thinks, pushing a little harder to break through a dense knot of peggies around the smaller bonfire. Heat radiates out from it, orange flames and charred logs. More than one person scowls as she tries to slip around them, stubbornly closing ranks against her.

"But some," John's displeasure turns quickly to anger, "Some prefer to wallow in their sins. Some will not face their fears. They are cowards who must be dragged into the light."

A sharp bark cuts under the ominous rise of his voice.

Shot through with fresh alarm, Rook twists to find Boomer.

Over the heads of the people surrounding her, she can see he's leapt to his feet. Head lowered and growling at the dark. Pointing at danger.

Squinting, she catches a glimpse of a pale form flitting between the trees.

And then another and another and another.

Angels.

Creeping up through the dark, eddies of Bliss trailing in their wake.

Fuck, she's got to get out  _now_.

Instinctive, she looks back at the deck.

Jacob has already recognized the threat.

Standing grimly behind John, he's moving his hands in a set of signals that send the Chosen pushing purposefully through the crowd.

Then he looks straight at her, and gestures sharply.

Because she's dressed like his  _fucking_ lieutenant and she has no fucking clue what he wants her to do. But his attention moves on without waiting, he's so certain she'll obey. Pushing off the wall, he reaches backwards through the doorway of the Chalet and pulls his rifle out of its resting place.

John, still wrapped up in making his own threats, doesn't notice.

Rook takes one more step back.

In her pocket, her hands closes around her last resort.

She might not have a lighter, no rifle or army of zealots to call, but the bonfire blazes furiously beside her.

And she has the dynamite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My computer crashed about three minutes after I finished writing this chapter (the first time) and took the entire thing with it. I had to rewrite the entire monster, weeping bitter tears into my keyboard. And, while I definitely think this is the stronger version, I'm still sort of in shock ... Damn. Oh well. Who else is excited for New Dawn?


	8. disproportionate trauma

"John, get inside."

Thrown off his stride, John lets go of the deck's railing and turns to frown at Jacob.

"What?"

" _Go_."

Jacob grabs him by the shoulder and drags him away from his audience. Indignant, John trips a little over his own feet as he resists. 

Straining to get back to the crowd below, he protests, "I was in the middle of-"

Then he catches sight of what's coming out of the woods for them, and the source of Jacob's urgency becomes clear.

"Yes,  _yes_ , I'm going," he snaps as he gets shoved through the doorway. "But I'm coming right back as soon as-"

"You armed?"

"I have a pistol. And  _I'll be right back_ as soon as I get something better suited."

"Armory's in the wine-cellar," Jacob tells him, blocking the doorway and checking the situation with his scope. "Take what you need and get back up here."

"Oh, I intend to," John promises with a close-lipped smile, "Just as soon as you tell me what on earth is going on with the Angels."

Jacob eyes him for a moment, the ominous silence outside seeping through the door to fill the room.

"Bad batch of Angels," Jacob grunts, breaking eye-contact.

"You know," John spits, his insecurities warping into a growing sense of betrayal, "You could put more effort into these _lies_ you're telling."

Jacob doesn't even try to deny the accusation.

"Fine!" Changing his mind, John whirls away from him. "If you want to be selfish, you can keep this mess to yourself. I have a mission of my own to pursue anyway."

"What's that?" Jacob spares a moment from checking his oh-so-important rifle to squint at John's back.

The Deputy, of course. But he's not about to share that little tidbit of information when his brother is being so withholding.

So he just smiles tightly over his shoulder, and leaves.

"Watch yourself, Johnny," Jacob calls behind him as he heads for the stairs.

"Have fun with the Angels!" he shouts back, making no promises.

If Jacob answers, it's drowned out by the deafening thunderclap of an explosion outside.

Gunfire immediately answers, and John grits his teeth. Grabbing the banister for balance, he takes the stairs in twos and threes and hits the ground floor in a hurry. Whatever trouble Jacob's brought down on his head, he can't let it distract him.

"You and you," he points to the Chosen guarding the doors, not caring what duties he's pulling them away from, "Follow me."

They fall into step without question.

Slipping his sunglasses into an inner pocket for safekeeping, John leads them down another set of stairs.

Of course Jacob keeps his guns in the wine cellar; he's a philistine at heart. John pushes through the armory door to find lockers bristling with weaponry. Then again, he thinks, there are certain advantages to doing things Jacob's way. Putting a hand up to feel for his key, he drums his fingers against his chest as he looks around.

Choices, choices.

But the racket outside is only growing louder, a persistent smell of smoke wafting through the open doors and windows, and he doesn't have time to be picky.

"Bliss bullets," he orders the Chosen. 

Exchanging his pistol for the one they bring him, he tries to think like a sinner on the run.

Where oh where could the Deputy be hiding?

_If_ she's hiding.

Slowly, he turns to look out the open door of the armory.

Grinning sharply, he rubs a thumb over his key. An angry satisfaction clutching tight in his chest. He knows where she's headed.

Excitement building, he rounds on the Chosen waiting behind him.

"I have a job for the two of you."

Minutes later, he's alone in the doorway of the Chalet, reloading his pistol and pocketing the extra magazine. Briefly, he considers letting Jacob know where he's going. Then he shrugs the impulse off. Jacob has his own work to do here. And John is protected. He'll be fine.

But the grounds surrounding the Chalet are a scene straight out of the Father's sermons.

Burning logs and debris litter the ground from scattered bonfires, illuminating the yard with a low, hellish light. The faithful are dug in deep behind every available shelter as Angels throw themselves into the bullets in a frenzied mass. Behind them, the fire has spread to the trees. Crowning them in smoke and writhing flame.

John pauses to drink it all in, one hand creeping up to brush the bruises beneath his vest.

God. They really are approaching the Collapse, aren't they?

Casting fear aside, he plunges into the chaos.

He has a sinner to catch.

* * *

The pickup roars down the ridge, headlights bouncing with every dip in the road. The little cross hanging over the dash swings crazily as Rook brakes for another steep turn. She leans into it, seatbelt cutting across her chest. Flashes of light reflect in her side mirrors, the popcorn burst of Jacob's last (latest) stand.

In the backseat, Boomer whines miserably.

"I know, boy," she says over her shoulder. "I hear you. But we have to get out of here."

He whimpers.

Rook grits her teeth against the instinct to let him out. To say he hates cars is an understatement on par with 'kicking that wild turkey was a bad idea' or 'we had some trouble arresting that cult leader' or 'golly gee oh my, that's a lot of guns you folks have there, I don't feel comfortable with the way you're pointing them at me.' But they can't stop now, it's not safe.

She can hear him pawing at the doors.

Gripping tight, her gloves creak against the steering-wheel. Ten-and-two for safety. Dusted with ash and dirt, ears ringing, she wonders if she should feel worse about the dynamite.

Hard to regret something that effective, though.

Keeping a wary eye out for pursuit, Rook checks her mirrors again. But the last cultists she saw were too busy fending off hordes of the Blissful dead to notice her peeling out. And the mirrors show only the fading light of the flames disappearing in the rear-view.

So they're probably fine.

The same cannot be said of John's party, which is sure to go down as  _memorable_ and  _well-attended_ and other plausibly-deniable ironies in Joseph's next book.

Turning up the music, she steps on the gas.

The twang of a cult hymn blasts out of the speakers as they zip past a security checkpoint. The soldiers there buy it, and Rook waves gratefully as they part to let her speed through. Her Chosen mask tucked tightly into her collar, its fuzzy red outlining her vision, she heads for the roads around Langford Lake.

Sticking his head over the back of her seat, Boomer whines urgently in her ear.

"Woah, easy there!" She steadies the wheel, reaching up to pat at him. Worried by how he trembles with every bump in the road. "Come on, sweetie, just a few more miles. You can do it."

The main road comes up fast, a left-right decision that Rook makes on the fly. They can bypass the roadblocks if they cut through the long arm of the mountains. Hauling the wheel sharply to the right, she races towards the border of Holland Valley. Wincing as Boomer scrabbles around to keep his balance in the back.

"Sorry, boy."

An ATV whips by, someone firing a shot after them on general principle. Rook ignores it, full speed ahead. She's not wasting bullets. She only just got this gun.

Her thumbs tap against the wheel, anxious and off-rhythm to the music.

( _shit goes to hell in minutes, but it lasts a thousand years_ )

She needs a fucking drink.

The inside of the truck smells faintly sweet, dried and crumbled leaves of Bliss ground into the cushions. Rook shivers, and watches the dark blue waters of the lake flow by. Reflecting orange and red fire from the ridge. She slouches into the creaky seat, her dog scratching in the back, and wonders why all their fishing trips are doomed to end in disaster.

"We need a less exciting hobby," she informs the dash.

They're down one fishing rod, a tackle box and quite a lot of bait, as well as a shirt she had kind of liked.

Rook wiggles one finger underneath the tactical vest that came with the cultist disguise, rolling her shoulders against the way it rides up behind her back.

Searching for inner peace, she shuts the music off. Losing herself in the humming of the engine and the rumble of the road ... and the little growls that Boomer makes as he chews up seat cushions. Fuck. Tension squeezes the back of her neck. This loop was supposed to be vacation for both of them.

She takes the next turn too fast, tires spitting dirt and gravel as they leave the main road. Recovering with a slight wobble, and a muffled thud somewhere around the rear-axle, the pickup accelerates up a narrow trail into the mountains. Trees and rocks walls close in as they climb.

This route is popular with hunters, cougars, and anything else that wants to avoid the patrols around the southern park entrance.

So: hunters, cougars, and Rook.

The trail crests sharply, fading into little more than a faint track through a cleft in the rock. Swaying pines and a small creek flash in the headlights as the truck's wheels tip over the brow of the ridge. A long drop into the dark.

"Hold on, boy."

Rook hits the gas, and doesn't even try to control the descent.

Trees loom abruptly out of the dark, unexpected curves that she takes dangerously fast. Giving in to the rollercoaster of adrenaline, she lets out a whoop as everything falls away in a lurch of speed. The whole truck shudders as they swerve downhill, thudding and thumping over the uneven terrain. 

Branches scrape the top of the cab, twigs slapping the windshield as they careen through the trees as the bottom of the hill.

Right in her ear, Boomer starts howling.

From the smell, he just pissed the seats.

"Alright!" She hits the brakes as the ground levels off. The seatbelt yanks tight, the suspension squeaking. "Alright, fine!"

The truck slews sideways with a spray of water and mud, jerking to a stop in the middle of a shallow stream. River-reeds waves in the headlights, thin slashes of deep green cover. The engine peters out into silence.

Kicking the door open, Rook doesn't even have a chance to unbuckle before Boomer is scrambling over her in his hurry to get out. Splashing to the shore, he dashes away from the truck.

"I'm sorry, okay!" Rook shouts after him after him as he disappears, upset that he's upset.

Setting the parking brake, she hops out into the muddy water.

"Dammit," she mutters, yanking the mask off her face.

She should have known better than to do ... any of it, really. The truck is a fucking mess, pine needles caught beneath the windshield wipers and the paint scratched all to hell. She could have crashed them.

Boomer will be back, but it might take a while. He's been through a lot today. Rook picks remorsefully at a loose thread in the ski-mask. So has she.

The stream runs fast around her ankles. Seeping into her boots and rippling dark over the deep grooves the truck's tires cut into the soft mud. Rook breathes in the boggy stench of the reed-beds, calming herself.

They're back in Holland Valley. Safe in the rolling hills with their wide spaces and bountiful cover. Angel- and wolf-free. (Herald-free too, for the evening.)

But she's not sure it's any safer here than it was up in the mountains.

Kicking one boot in the water, she takes a look around as her eyes adjust to the dark. She's in a little depression between two hills, where the water has eroded a path down from the mountains. Steep banks slope up around her, the flat line of a ridge cutting across the sky on one side and a mountain on the other. Cougar country.

Rook hugs herself, listening to the flitter of insects in the reeds.

This is not a good place to be unarmed unarmed, especially not in these clothes.

She shrugs out of the jacket and vest, tossing them into the back of the truck.

Plucking reluctantly at the dark red shirt - which blends into the shadows so well, despite being  _peggie_ \- she figures that streaking half-naked to Rae-Rae's farm is not the best plan. Getting shot by the resistance for the white cross on her shoulder is less embarrassing than finding wanted posters with her shirtless torso tacked up all over the outposts.

(Can't have people thinking she's going shirts-n-skins with Joseph.)

She's pulling off the heavy gloves when someone reaches out of the dark and hooks an arm hard around her neck.

Her feet slip, kicking in the mud as she's dragged backwards into the tailgate of the truck.

"Deputy!" John exclaims brightly in her ear. "Where in God's name did you learn how to drive?"

Rook freezes with both hands prying at his arm, surprised. The fuck? She twists her head around as best she can. It's definitely John Seed, kneeling in the bed of the pickup, leaning out to  _strangle her_.

She chokes out a confused noise.

The answering squeeze of his arm across her throat is distinctly smug.

Rook shoves her gun into the bottom of his jaw.

She doesn't trust how easily he lets her go.

Stumbling away, panting for air, she keeps her aim steady on his head. John props one elbow up on the tailgate, the picture of unconcern. An appreciative grin plastered across his face.

His own gun leveled at her chest.

"Now, Deputy," he chides, "Are you so afraid of a little conversation? You must really have something to hide."

Yeah, Rook thinks, shaken, she needs to hide  _herself_. How the fuck did he guess she would go for the trucks? Did he take a flying leap at the last second, or did he stow away while she was coaxing Boomer into the cab? Either way, she's mildly impressed and seriously freaked out.

John Seed taking a hands-on approach to capturing her is really, really not what she needs in the pre/post/pre-apocalypse.

Shifting for the reeds, she slides a step sideways.

"Oh, don't run! All I want to do is talk."

And the sheer fucking nerve of him, to say that after the flaying and the tattoos and the bodies at the crossroads, with the valley burning and Fall's End burning and his blood on her hands every time since the first time because he won't let her walk away any more than she could after what he did-

"Not after the drowning," she reminds him viciously, because she sure as hell hasn't forgotten. "And the nail-gun. And that stupid chair."

"What?"

He looks bewildered, which pisses her off more. Not like he's not the same person.

"Just because you haven't doesn't mean you won't. Wouldn't."

Whatever.

Shaking her head, Rook takes another step back. Water running cold around her legs as the stream deepens. It slops into her boots, soaking her socks. She shivers. Too worn out to keep the anger from draining out of her as quick as it came.

John is frowning at her, puzzled. His aim wavering.

"Feel free to explain yourself, Deputy. I'm willing to listen. Whatever you have to say, I promise it'll stay between us."

Her breath explodes out, a burst of exasperation at his bald-faced  _lies_. John Seed wouldn't know privacy if it slapped his face and stepped on his balls.

"Stop trying to confess me," she orders, words scraping out with a metallic taste. "I won't do it again."

John's eyebrows go up.

"You haven't been to confession at  _all_."

Half in a memory of a dark room with skin on the walls and blood on the floor, Rook shakes her head again. Who cares how crazy she sounds? In a contest between her and the Seeds, she's still the sanest by a metric-ton of mutilated bodies.

(None of them are good people, but she still wins on that score.)

John's eyes shine, alight with a dangerous curiosity. He's leaning forward again, one hand braced on the tailgate for balance. The other gestures sharply at her with his gun.

"You haven't been baptized either," he points out, right and wrong wrong wrong. "You haven't been in my bunker, or my chair. I've certainly never threatened you with drowning or nails." (His tone suggests that these options are not off the table.) "I didn't tell you what your sin is, but you already knew."

Trapped by his half-accusatory smile, Rook doesn't like where this is going.

"Everyone knows what you do to people," she mumbles, too tired not to answer.

Falling silent, John studies her.

After three seconds, the quiet gets to Rook. It doesn't suit him. The gears turning obviously in his head, the possibility that he's stopped talking long enough to listen for real: that unnerves her.

"Don't," she warns him. Not sure what it is she doesn't want to happen, but certain that it shouldn't. "I don't-"

She doesn't want to start shooting.

( _not again_ )

Her voice dies out, washed away. Upstream, a waterfall rushes over rocks, loud and insistent as it drains into the stream at her feet. Fastidious, John remains safe and dry in the bed of the truck. Contained. But only for the moment.

Does she really have a choice here?

The gun is a cold answer in her hand.

Exhaustion floods over her, prickling across her scalp. Weighing down her limbs. She has to do something about John before he pushes her back onto the path of blood and fire. But killing him will only lead to the same end.

The church waiting with doors flung wide. Bombs falling to earth.

(It had cracked and bled and burned.)

"Deputy!" John calls behind her, suddenly out of the truck and splashing through the reeds after her. "Stop."

"Sixty-two!" she blurts out, shaken back into the present.

Reeds sway around them, roots and fallen stems matted around their feet. Somehow, she'd walked herself half-way up the bank of the stream. A good ten feet from where she last remembers standing. 

Hastily, she raises the gun again.

Frowning, John lifts his hands in a show of peace. His own pistol pointing harmlessly into the air. Beneath his beard, his mouth does a calculating little twist that she dislikes.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to explain this obsession you have with numbers, would you, Deputy?"

She would not.

(She's not obsessed, he's obsessed.)

"Would it make a difference if I told you," John adds in that same considering tone, "that I visited Larry Parker's lab this morning?"

Rook freezes, fear dropping through her stomach like a stone. Panic rippling out.

God, she's so  _fucking_ stupid.

The magnopulsar is lying right in the middle of Larry's backyard because it never even occurred to her that anyone else might want to go there. That someone like John Seed might get his hands on a piece of barely understood, time-warping technology. If he has, then they're all really, really fucked.

Blank, whole body buzzing with horror, Rook stares at him. His blue eyes glitter back, searching her face. Trawling for a reaction and grabbing for her weak points.

Fuck if he hasn't found one.

"Tell me you didn't fire it," she begs.

His brows crease, dipping into confusion again but that doesn't make it  _safe_.

Rook feels her voice shaking out of control. "You shouldn't mess with it, you haven't seen what it-"

Her teeth click shut on something utterly insane.

This is insane.

She had her chance to make it right, and she failed. Nothing she does will stop it. Nothing she says will change the future.

But John still waits for her to finish her sentence, radiating barely contained questions. Unaware of the mess he's stumbled into. (Aliens and apocalypse, the awful contortions of time and fate.) He shouldn't be out here. He should have brought someone to protect him.

Rook closes her eyes in defeat.

_you (don't really) have a choice_

John is still there when she opens them.

Pulling the trigger is easy as only a bad answer can be.

The gun kicks back in her hand, her sloppy grip barely keeping hold. A bright muzzle-flash lighting up the rippling waters of the stream. The gunshot echoing from the hills.

John folds up with startled wheeze, dropping backwards to the ground with his hands clutching for the bullet in his chest.

The stream murmurs beside them, babbling to the dark. Drowning out the faint gasp of his last breaths. Rook looks away from the dark sprawl of his body in the broken reeds.

Guilty guilty.

"I'm sorry."

It doesn't matter.

(It does.)

Losing her voice, she leaves him to die in peace.

He's already gone, and she feels something inside her go with him.

Hope that this time would be different, maybe. But it won't. In sixty-two days the bombs are going to drop. The world is going to end. And she'll wake up, and John will wake up, and they'll be right back at square one.

The only thing that Joseph got wrong was the idea that any of them had a chance.

( _maybe maybe we deserve_ )

The pickup is a pale shape in the night, white paint glowing in the dim starlight. She stumbles back to it with heavy steps, fighting off the urge to curl up in the mud and sleep until the world ends.

There's no blood in the dark, but she feels it dripping down her hands all the same. Hot and sticky, clotting on her skin as she reaches for the handle. Black as the burst of the Project's cross painted on the doors. What is she supposed to do now?

Slumping, Rook stands with her fingers on the handle for a long minute. Lost.

A knife hits the side-mirror next to her, shattering glass.

"You know, Deputy," John coughs behind her, "I never did get a chance to thank you for your advice about body armor."

Struggling to process, Rook stares over her shoulder.

John stands barely a yard behind her. Very much alive.

His smile is more of a grimace as he pokes at the hole singed in his shirt. The brassy gleam of the bullet embedded in kevlar beneath. Whole and bloodless.

His voice bites out sharp with anger. "I'm feeling more grateful all the time."

Mute, grappling with the reality of him, Rook doesn't move. Not even when he limps right past her to yank the throwing knife out of the ruined mirror.

There's a gun at her belt that she doesn't reach for. His neck in easy reach for snapping. But she doesn't stop him from shoving her backwards into the side of the truck. Doesn't push away the knife he points at her.

No matter what she changes,  _nothing_ changes.

She doesn't know what to do any more.

* * *

Favoring his bruised ribs, John deeply appreciates the way the Deputy's mouth gapes in shock. He imagines slipping the knife between her teeth. Forcing her to open even wider, straining and gagging with the blade pressed flat to her tongue. Maybe by the time he let up, she'd find herself a little more eager to cooperate.

Forcing his anger down, he puts the knife to her throat instead.

The tip digs delicately under her chin.

She twitches a little, a tremor running through her that only feeds his desire to cut deep. But she doesn't try to get away. And her dumbstruck paralysis helps him keep hold of his temper. If he hadn't lost his gun in the reed-bed, he'd have shot her with Bliss already and removed the temptation.

John wriggles a little in his own skin, chest aching when he moves. Spattered in mud, with twigs caught in his hair and clothes, his whole body sports a collection of bruises. This latest one, a mark she's given him herself.

He doesn't understand  _why_.

"What else do I have to do to prove myself?" he demands.

Predictably, she doesn't respond.

She can't even hold his gaze, staring down at her feet. Too much of a coward to face him. Frustrated beyond measure, John crowds her against the truck. Wanting to shake her until coherent words - or her teeth - rattle out. He pricks at her neck with the knife until she blinks.

Her eyes, when they finally meet his, are dark pits in her face.

"You've seen the Collapse, Deputy, I know you feel it coming." The knife slides lower, down into the hollow of her throat. John watches the rise-fall of her chest, tempted to start working himself under her skin. Catching his slip, he jerks his eyes back up. "I  _see_ you, wallowing in your sin. You would rather bleed out in the muck than take the smallest step towards salvation."

It's such a  _waste_. He doesn't understand. She's supposed to be like Joseph, but she has none of the Father's wisdom or tranquility. She doesn't make John feel calm. She makes him want to start ripping off skin, peeling away the outer layers until they get to the dark, blood-warm core.

And still she refuses to answer.

"What has the Project done to offend you so greatly?" he asks, agitated at how far she is from what he expected of a prophet. Even a heretic should be able to give an account of themselves. "Would you rather damn your soul than accept our help? Is your wrath so all-consuming that it won't be satisfied until we perish in the Collapse?"

"That's not-"

His eagerness at hearing her finally speak crashes into disappointment when she fades back into silence.

Temper flaring, he grabs her by the shirt.

"Oh, come now," he encourages with false sweetness, breath hitching as the motion pulls his ribs. "Surely you can carry a single sentence to completion."

As usual, she proves utterly incapable.

Red fabric stretches tight beneath his hand. Another disguise that needs to come  _off_  before she can be cleansed. John's hand fists in her collar, furious at being stone-walled again. He might have to put up with it from Jacob, but damned if he'll accept it meekly from a sinner like this. He tugs the Deputy forward into the knife. Holding her there on the pointed edge.

"Find your tongue," he warns softly, blade hovering under her jaw. "Or I will find it for you."

_Finally_ , she gathers the motivation to give him a full sentence.

"I don't want to kill you, John."

A sharp amusement cuts through him at how little she comprehends their respective roles. He lets go of her collar, waving his hand in dismissal.

"This isn't about me, Deputy.  _You_ have to be saved, which means you have to reach atonement, which means you need to  _confess_. Preferably sometime before the Collapse, if you can manage."

"Don't."

Unexpectedly, she finds some inner reserve of strength. Her flat voice taking on new inflections.

"Stop talking about it."

"I know you're afraid, Deputy. But you-"

"No." Her words rise over his. Rough and choppy. "You don't know the Collapse. You think you do. But you don't."

John raises his brows at this veritable outpouring of words. It only took sacrificing his dignity to the truck and getting shot point-blank in the chest, but they're making  _progress_. Hallelujah, it's about damn time. Even better: she sounds more upset about the Collapse than confession, which is encouraging. He feels like they're close to the heart of the problem. But clearly she requires more of a push.

"So enlighten me, Deputy," he requests, prodding at her chest with the knife. "What divine revelation has burned your eyes and blinded you to the truth?"

But she slumps back in silence. Drifting out of focus. Unable or unwilling to answer.

"Deputy?" he demands, irritated by the setback. "Deputy, your habit of wandering off in the middle of conversations is going to bring you to grief. I don't care how lost you are in visions,  _pay attention_."

Tapping the knife flat against her throat, he huffs at the lack of reply. Waving a hand in front of her face, despite the twinge it sends through his ribs, John snaps his fingers. The Deputy doesn't react. Unresponsive as a sleepwalker. Or an Angel.

"I  _should_ send you to Faith," he informs her. "That's where people who can't handle the reality of the Collapse go. Her ministry is supposed to be a blessing, but ... well, you've seen the Angels. Somehow, I don't think you'd be able to complain about your treatment there."

The Deputy remains unmoved.

John bites his tongue and prays for patience, tempted to stab her awake.

But he doesn't quite dare raise a hand to a prophet in anger.

Not even a stubborn, wandering heretic like this one.

Fortunately for them both, she returns to awareness with a sudden shake. An aborted little struggle that he pushes back easily.

"Back with me, Deputy?" He smoothes a hand down her shoulder, watching her panic flare and then die when he releases her. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to share what these little episodes are about."

She leans back into the truck until her head bumps the window, watching him warily.

But he can see the cracks crumbling her at the edges.

A hard shell of resolve settles over his frustration, forcing it down under the weight of his determination. She's going to join them at the Gate. Even if she's currently too paralyzed by visions of the Collapse to see that Eden lies beyond it. All John has to do is persevere. 

With a little snap, he comes to a decision.

He needs to have more faith in providence.

"Very well, then," he pulls away from her, "I can see that we need to built trust."

The knife twirls between his fingers, then disappears into a pocket. Her eyes follow it, blinking. A slow look of confusion dawning in her eyes. John smiles.

"How about we make a deal, hm? You seem to like those, devil that you are."

She hunches her shoulders, wearing a look of suspicion he has done nothing to deserve. Of the two of them,  _he's_ not the one poisoned with cowardice and dishonesty.

"I propose that we both walk away from this little ... moment that we've shared," he suggests, quite reasonably. "And come back to it fresh in the morning."

He watches with pleasure as surprise works across her face.

" _If_ ," he emphasizes, holding up two fingers to keep her attention, "You agree that we  _will_ come back to it."

Her mouth twitches, unhappy.

"You're lost, Deputy." He wants to grab her by the arms, dig the point in with his fingernails, but he holds himself back. "You're consumed by the fear of what's ahead, and you need help."

"Not your help," she mutters, rebellious.

A jagged sliver of anger jabs him.

"Don't think that my siblings will be as generous as I am," he snaps, frustrated. "Do you think that Jacob or Faith care what state they leave you in? I won't carve away any more of you than I have to, Deputy. You're better off with me, I promise."

She shrugs, but her eyes flicker down.

"I'm meeting you half-way here," he urges, sensing her hesitation. "Stay in the valley, speak with me tomorrow, and I won't keep you from your own bed tonight."

She chews on her thoughts for a long minute. Thinking his proposition through with a heavy slowness that has him tapping his feet in impatience.

"Yes or no, Deputy? I'm offering you a choice." His tone drops dangerously. "I don't have to be so giving."

His eyes drop too, uneasy, to where her hand rests on the butt of her gun. The slightest hint of doubt. She's such a blunt instrument, it seems unlikely that finesse will prove more persuasive than brute force.

But, lo and behold, she gives way with a shrug of acceptance.

"Fine."

"Yes!" He reaches out in his excitement, gripping her by the shoulders and forgiving how her whole body tenses. "You'll be glad you agreed," he promises, an answering shiver of anticipation running down his spine.

He  _knew_ she could be swayed. He only had to keep trying until they made this breakthrough together. Satisfaction loosens the knots of resentment coiling in his gut, allows him to release her as well.

"Trust me," he says, unclipping the radio from his belt with quick hands. "You won't regret it."

The first yes is always the hardest. He doesn't care that she tried to kill him tonight. This makes it more than worth the pain.

But he blocks her path when she tries to edge out from between him and the truck.

"Here," he holds his radio up, wiggling it enticingly when she doesn't move. "Take it. I know you don't carry one, and we'll need to arrange our next meeting."

Cautiously, she grabs it. Careful not to touch him as she does. The slow slide of plastic out between his fingers teases him with the desire to yank it, and her, back again. John lets go with a chuckle that strains his ribs.

Without a word, she ducks around him.

"Oh, and Deputy?" John calls after her. "I expect you to keep that radio  _on_."

She doesn't look back, but he's sure that little burst of extra speed she puts on means she heard him.

She's  _chosen_ to listen from now on.

And that's the real victory.

John stays by the truck, shoving his hands into his pockets and watching the night swallow her up.

He isn't being kind, letting her play out the rope on which she'll choke. But if that's what it takes for her to recognize how enslaved she is by her own sins ... well, John doesn't mind. He might even derive a certain vindictive satisfaction watching her flounder.

Soon enough, she'll come to  _him_.

Whistling, he contents himself with the thought of what he'll do when she does. He can wait when he knows there's a good thing coming. And the idea of the Deputy humbly knocking on his door, is enough to keep him warm on the long, lonely drive back to his bunker.

* * *

_walk away walk away walk away_

Rook scrambles through the bushes, heading up into the hills on a blind instinct to put as much distance between her and John Seed as possible.

Walk away and everything will be fine.

(She shot him. She nearly broke his neck before he tried to hand her that stupid radio. Fuck. He needs ten more layers of kevlar and a riot-shield if he's going to be wandering without supervision. So does she.  _Fuck_.)

Boomer catches up before she gets too far, loping out of the woods to greet her with a low bark.

Mean with guilt, Rook puts her hands on her hips and glares at him. "Where were  _you_ when I needed you?"

He leaps up and licks her face, forgiving her for making him ride in a car.

Losing all steam, Rook kneels down and holds on tight.

Today has been a fucking disaster.

"Come on," she sniffs, wiping her face off and pretending it's all dog-slobber. "Let's get going. We have to check on Larry's."

But when they reach the lab, there's nothing there.

The whole place has been cleaned out, stripped of anything remotely useful. And a good deal of junk that isn't.

Rook pokes around, feeling cold. There are faint marks where the posts of the teleportation cage used to stand. Scuffs in the dirt where it was carried off. Inside, Larry's notebooks, his newspaper articles and blackboards, his weird TVs and bits of scrap metal: they're gone. Even the arcade cabinet was taken.

Her hand hovers over the radio.

"What the fuck," she says to Boomer. "What the fuck did this."

It's pretty clear that John is responsible, but  _why?_

Her hand drops from the radio.

She has no idea what to do.

"Okay." Air leaks out of her in a sigh. "Okay okay okay. No reason to panic."

_Aliens_ is a pretty big stretch for anyone to make without evidence.  _Time travel_ is an even bigger one, even  _with_ evidence. The magnopulsar might be functional, but if there's a way to make the teleportation cage work without Larry then she hasn't found it.

"We'll get it back," she reassures Boomer. "He wants to talk. We can use that."

Her hands tingle, numb.

God knows what a maniac like John Seed would do if he got trapped in a time loop. Torture people for fun. Kill anyone he doesn't like. Make himself petty king of his own little kingdom.

(But those are things he's doing now.)

"Not like he'll survive until the apocalypse anyway."

She's pretty sure that radiation was the secret ingredient that made time go crazy. Until the day of Armageddon, the magnopulsar is a handheld microwave. John can't do anything worse than vaporize people. And that's just a fancy way of making them dead.

"Fuck." 

Rook swears softly to herself all the way to the Pumpkin Farm, looking for a safe place to sleep. Untroubled by the worries of tomorrow, Boomer trots close to her side. The last good thing in the world.

The tiny scratch under her chin itches.

By the time they reach the farm, she's so exhausted that she barely does more than secure the perimeter and feed Boomer a can or real dog food from the pantry (much to his delight.) Then she stuffs the radio under a couch cushion, and drops face-down into sleep.

Everything else is a problem for the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a long delay, have this chapter! (Life got me, but I'm back.) John totally made everyone put their car-keys in a communal key jar at the Chalet, and Rook reached right through the doorway and fished a pair out. Which vindicates Jacob's security concerns and causes all later cultist parties to have a strict "keys are guarded by Judges" policy.


	9. no

Dawn finds Rook sitting on a fence in Rae-Rae's field. Her feet swing gently back and forth, skimming the tips of the thin yellow grass. Pale light spills over the hill behind the farmhouse, washing across the trailing green vines and the orange swell of the pumpkins. With her back to the sunrise, Rook digs one hand into a box of stale cereal and crunches her way through breakfast.

A pair of ducks flies overhead, quacking mournfully as they pass. She can smell damp grass and ripening squash, hear the faint thud of another apple falling from its branch. Autumn has arrived.

And with it, the end of the world.

Boomer, dozing in the yard behind her, twitches and whuffs in his sleep.

Rook kicks one heel backwards into the soft wood of the old fence. It feels good to be in her own clothes again, spare gun and ammo retrieved from the cache in Rae-Rae's house. She'd even enjoyed a hot shower before breakfast. All the little perks of civilization.

But John's commercial still plays on the TV inside. It had woken her up to an endless loop of  _welcome welcome welcome_ and a sadness that won't scrub off.

She can almost convince herself that without it, she could have forgotten last night.

(She can't.)

"You'd think the laws of time and space would be reliable," she complains quietly to a distant scarecrow. "You'd think they would take care of themselves."

Faceless, stuffed with straw, the scarecrow does not helpfully spring to life and guide her down the yellow brick road to happiness.

"Yeah," Rook sighs, tilting her head back to search the sky for flying saucers and rainbows. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

The sky is an empty, far-away blue and - like a stubborn and resistant civilian - the space/time continuum remains eternally distressed.

Today's looming disaster: the cult has the magnopulsar.

Rook knows what she has to do to get it back.

The radio John left her sounds as staticky as any other when she tunes slowly through the channels.

She snaps the belt-clip open and closed a couple of times, reluctant. (This is going to hurt.) The early morning hush muffles her voice, stifling it into something small and subdued when she finally resigns herself to fate.

"Hey, Dutch. You there?"

* * *

John wakes up excited in more ways than one.

Today is going to be special, he knows it. He hums a little as he showers himself in the tiny, but blessedly private, bathroom adjoining his room in the bunker. The cheery tune takes on an extra lilt as he prods his tender yellow-brown bruises. They're healing nicely.

Even his ribs, thank all that is holy and good. When he got in last night, his medical staff had assured him of what he already knew: that the bones weren't cracked and the bruising would clear up with rest. John selectively interprets this as permission to do whatever he wants. Now is not the time to be going slow.

There are a few things, however, that cannot be rushed.

With his radio close at hand, he trims his beard in the bathroom mirror.

Sadly, the first call he receives is not the Deputy begging for atonement.

"John."

"Good morning, brother!" John says with exaggerated cheer to make up for Jacob's surly tone. "It's so nice to hear your voice and know you're not lying in a ditch somewhere, dying horribly. You're not, are you?"

No response, but he can imagine the scowl.

"To what do I owe this pleasure? Keep it short, please, I'm expecting another call."

"Faith is off the path," Jacob announces without preamble. "She's weak and she must be culled."

John laughs, and gets back to styling his hair.

"Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" he asks lightly, juggling the radio and the comb with practiced dexterity. "She might have ruined dinner but, as the Father says, she is our sister. Murdering her in cold blood sounds like a bit of a disproportionate response. Besides," he adds in the spirit of fairness, "it seems to me that you fired the first shots, what with butchering her Angels and all."

"She's out of line," Jacob insists. "She's too weak to handle the Bliss, and it's a threat to the Project."

John raises his eyebrows at the radio.

"You have some evidence to back up these allegations, I assume. Have you spoken with the Father? What does  _he_ say?"

"Joseph already made it clear. 'Faith' is just one more tool. The Bliss eats through their minds like any other Angel. And when they start to lose their grip, they get replaced. Simple as that."

"I hardly think it's  _simple_ , brother." Setting down the comb, John frowns. He might not like Faith, but she is family. Of a sort. "The Father wouldn't approve."

"He's off the grid, and the Collapse is coming closer. Swift and decisive action is the only way to deal with an internal threat."

Unimpressed, John rolls his eyes to his reflection in the mirror.

"I don't agree that there _is_ a threat."

Not from Faith, surely.

But how to convince Jacob of that? Leaning against the sink, finger firmly on the button to prevent interruptions, John thinks quickly.

Jacob rarely asks forgiveness  _or_ permission. This isn't some courtesy call before he brutally cuts Faith out of the picture. No, John decides, what his brother wants is someone to play devil's advocate. He has doubts, and he's looking for someone to challenge his decision.

John can do that.

With a deep breath, he adopts the reasonable tone that always strikes a chord with his brother, "Like you said, the Collapse is imminent. You and I don't have time to take charge of the Henbane. We're barely keeping up with the reaping as it is." No thanks to the fools in the resistance. "I'm sure that whatever ... steps you've taken to cull Faith will work just as well to keep her in check while we await the Father's decision. I assume that he's no longer in the Henbane, and you  _are_ trying to contact him."

Jacob remains silent, which John chooses to interpret as a 'yes' to both questions.

"Well then," he concludes briskly, returning to the delicate task of combing his hair, "Yet another reason to keep things as they are until you hear from him. All this intrigue and infighting undermines the very foundation the Project rests on. Isn't that worse than any potential damage Faith might do to her region? I'm sure that together, you and I are more than capable of restoring order once Joseph gives the word."

The speech sounds far more confident than he feels. If Jacob decides to depose Faith, there's little John can do to stop him and they both know it. Not without truly destabilizing the Project, anyway, and neither of them will risk that.

He hopes.

Fortunately for all concerned, Jacob heeds reason  _marginally_ more than paranoia.

"Fine. Have it your way, Johnny. But I'm not waiting around for the Collapse to take this out of our hands. I've already sent out patrols to locate Joseph. I suggest you do the same in your region."

"Yes, yes," John replies quickly, relieved. "If you find him before I do, let him know I'll have good news for him soon. It's an unrelated matter, but no less important."

If all goes well, he'll have brought the Deputy to atonement inside the week.

Jacob grunts.

"I've taken control of Faith's relay station. If she tries to contact you anyway, you know who to trust."

"Yes, Jacob."

He hardly thinks _this_ Faith is any less trustworthy than her predecessors. But that's setting the bar low, so John keeps it to himself. He knows how to quit while he's ahead.

Jacob signs off with a gruff: "Keep an eye on the Angels. And don't let your people fall behind in their work."

"Of course not," John promises. "We'll speak again soon, brother."

Setting the radio down, he frowns at his reflection.

This development is less than ideal.

Yesterday's fiasco was bound to create fallout between his siblings, but Jacob's reaction seems unwarrantedly severe. Culling Faith? He shakes his head, twisting his earring into a better alignment. So close to the Collapse, and without the Father's blessing, no less? That's just a recipe for disaster.

John sighs, pushing away from the mirror and pinching the bridge of his nose in anticipation of headaches to come. Really, it's a miracle he gets any work done what with all these distractions clamoring for his attention.

He's more convinced than ever that Joseph won't speak to them until the Deputy answers for her sins.

She  _can_ , she will, she did last night.

He just has to keep squeezing it out of her one gasping  _yes_ at a time.

Satisfied with his attire and appearance, a supportive bandaged wrapped snugly around his ribs, John strides forth to seize the day.

"Sir." One of the Chosen interrupts before he gets more than half-a-dozen steps. "There's been an incident at the Copperhead Railyard."

What's left of John's good mood crashes and burns spectacularly.

That's where he sent all of Larry Parker's old junk.

* * *

There are some things Rook has missed about the resistance. Good directions to her goal, for one. A friendly voice on the radio for another. (Unfriendly voices need not apply,  _John_.)

"Rumor has it the peggies are movin scrap metal in and outta the old Copperhead Railyard," Dutch tells her as she hikes away from the pumpkin farm. "If you're lookin for somethin they salvaged from the Parker place, it'll be there."

Settling into position on a small hill overlooking the railyard, Rook pulls out her binoculars. Boomer paws at the dusty ground beside her, and she gives his ruff a good-luck scratch.

There's an awkward silence on the radio, a gap where she should be explaining herself.

(She can't.)

Eventually, Dutch says, "Be careful, Dep. Got reports of some weird shit happening out in the Henbane. The Whitetails too. Best you stick to the valley for now. Get back in the swing of things."

Rook makes a noncommittal noise.

She's going wherever she has to go in order to get the magnopulsar back.

And then she's going to bury it somewhere so deep, it will take more than the literal apocalypse to unearth it.

Down below her perch, the brick station-house gleams with exposed metal, sunlight glinting from its broken windows and sagging metal roof. But there are only a few cultists working the morning shift. She counts three of them through the holes in the building, along with a couple of Angels hauling crates of salvage to the supple truck parked out front.

A battered boombox sits on a stack of crates, playing peggie music at top volume over the whir of buzzsaws and the shriek of rending metal.

"Good luck, kid." Dutch pauses, long enough to make her sweat, but all he adds is, "Good to have you back in the fight."

Guilty, Rook manages to remember civilization for a second.

"Thanks, Dutch."

She doesn't deserve his help. Not with all the lies she's letting him believe. All the questions she hadn't answered. But ' _I need to keep the cult from messing with my malfunctioning alien ray-gun_ ' isn't exactly a good conversation starter.

Leaving the hill, she circles down the bumpy terrain to the station-house. The big building looms over her, rust-red against the blue sky. Looking up, she spots a guard with a sniper rifle pacing the roof. (Not great.) Crouching in the shade, she creeps along the ruined fence to the flatyard.

"Yeah," she mutters to Boomer's anxious whine as he follows her, "I know, boy. But John's always pissed off."

If they're lucky, he's still sleeping in. Dreaming of attempted baptism and certain betrayal, no doubt. The taste of rusty iron sours in Rook's mouth.

She stops a minute to give Boomer a reassuring pat and adds hopefully, "Besides, if this plan works out, we'll be long gone by the time he realizes he's been stood up at his own ambush."

And if the magnopulsar has already been shipped to his bunker ... well, they'll burn that bridge when they trick John outside and steal his key again.

(He might not forgive, but he  _will_ forget.)

"In and out, boy," she promises, patting Boomer's flank. "No one will ever know."

Crouching in the shade, she peers around the wide yard behind the station-house.

A lot of crates lie scattered around, but she can't spot anything that looks like it might have been from Larry's. Rook makes a face. Checking them one at a time it is.

Another guard ambles by, idly patrolling the perimeter and humming along to the music.

Rook waits until he turns his back, then dashes across the open space of the yard.

Right past an Angel.

She catches a blurred impression of Bliss-pale eyes and white rags as she slides to safety under a boxcar.

Panting, she hugs the train tracks and listens for the wail of an alarm.

But the Angel only grunts mindlessly to itself. Then it gets on with its work, picking up a length of rusty pipe and dragging it away. Rook watches its bare feet shuffle by, heart hammering with relief.

Too close.

She re-holsters her gun.

Boomer shoves his head under the railcar, bright eyes curious. (She maybe should have sent him to investigate before she rushed in and almost blew everything in the first five seconds.) But he obeys her whispered command to scout without judgment. Rook ducks her head, listening to the light growls he makes as he encounters peggies.

Old wood creaks beneath her shins as she pulls herself along the length of the boxcar. Little weeds tickle her elbows, sprouting between the slats of the old tracks. The joyful strains of a Project hymn covers the slight noises of her sneaking.

And then, clearly audible, she hears a sharp  _crack_ , and the softer  _thwump_ of a body hitting the dirt.

Rook squirms to look back over her shoulder, alarmed.

The Angel's bare feet pass her hiding place once again, the bloodstained and rusty pipe dragging along the ground.

Lying in the dirt behind it, the patrolling guard lies with his skull caved in. Blood seeps into the dry dirt around him. Rook blinks, confused.

Fuck, look who got murdered by an Angel.

They really are going crazy these days.

Not interested in finding out why, Rook rolls out from beneath the boxcar and dashes for better cover.

The music still plays, choir singing ( _oh Lord! this earth was made for us!_ ) over the sound of the pipe cracking another skull. Up on the second level of the station-house, she catches a glimpse of the Angel hobbling away from its latest victim. She feels more than hears the rumble of Boomer growling close at her side.

Greatly daring, she leans out of cover and chucks a large rock at the boombox.

The missile hits dead on target, knocking it to the ground and cutting the music off in the middle.

"Hey-!"

Up on the roof of the building, the last peggie gets off one wild shot before the Angel pushes him off. He hits the ground hard. And doesn't get up again.

In the silence that follows, Rook listens to the shuffle of bare feet and the faint scrape of the pipe along the roof. Carefully, Boomer sticking close to her heels, she creeps out of cover. The two remaining Angels continue stacking crates in the supply truck, carrying on with their work as though nothing is wrong. Rook gives them wide berth, climbing up the ladder to the upper level in search of boxes to investigate. Her nerves prickle in the quiet, ears ringing.

She reaches walkway, stepping around a dead cultist without pausing. The crazy Angel is clearly visible through the gaps in the roof, a stick-thin figure swaying against the blue sky. Loose white sleeves fluttering in the faint breeze.

Head turning to keep it in view, Rook nearly trips over the first crate labeled 'Parker Labs.'

She reads and re-reads it twice before giving an inward cheer. There are six or seven white wooden crates stacked on top of each other, all of them with Larry's name printed neatly on the sides.

(God bless the conscientious peggie who labeled them.)

Forgetting all about Angels above and below, Rook immediately starts prying off their lids.

Two strikes before she gets lucky.

The magnopulsar lies under a disassembled telescope and she drags it out with a grunt of effort and the sweet, sweet thrill of victory.

Fuck  _yeah_ she found it!

The bright copper ring shines in the sunlight. Rook rubs a thumb over it affectionately. She hates this time-warping toaster, but she's never been so relieved to see anything in her life.

Before she can do more than stroke its warning labels lovingly, however, the Angel crashes her party.

Dropping through a hole in the roof in front of her, it hits the concrete face-down with a dull and painful  _thud_.

All sharp elbows and knobby knees, it drags itself upright with wheezy breaths.

Rook watches warily, pistol in hand and prophet-vaporizing doomsday weapon tucked safely behind her.

But she hesitates to shoot.

It  _did_  take out an outpost of cultists for her. With more subtlety than she would expect from a brain-dead husk. Somehow, though, she doesn't think it's on her side.

The Angel coughs through its face-mask, glassy eyes wide and green-white with Bliss.

Faith greets her out of its mouth.

"Deputy!"

Rook, every hair standing on end, doesn't answer. But she doesn't shoot either.

"I told you I would help," says Faith, voice swooping low and impassioned in the dead air of the station-house. "Don't you see? You don't have to be afraid!"

Hands reach out in appeal.

"You can trust me."

Rook shoots it twice, right in the forehead, and watches it crumple in a heap.

She's done a lot of dumb things in the past. She'll do a lot more in the future. Trusting a Seed won't be one of them.

"That would be stupid," she says to no one.

No matter what gestures of good-will they might make, she's never going down into a bunker again.

Grabbing the magnopulsar, Rook climbs down and shoots the other two Angels on her way out of the station-house. (With her pistol, not the alien ray-gun, because that's another mistake she's not repeating.)

Boomer, tail wagging, pants happily at her heels.

"What do you say, boy?" she asks him, "Let's drop this nightmare of science down a deep dark hole and catch us a fish, yeah?"

But he drops his head, hackles rising, to growl at the road.

Rook curses, but there's no time to run as a small convoy screeches into the drive.

The trio of vehicles that barrel down upon her in a disorderly assortment of styles and sizes. Rook, seeing the sheriff's star stenciled onto their hoods, relaxes. They have 'US Marshals' spray-painted onto their sides in proud golden yellow.

It's the resistance. (yay?)

Wary, but not too worried, she waits to see what they want.

The lead SUV pulls to a stop inches from her knees, blasting her with exhaust. The other two park behind it, blocking the gate out. Still holding the magnopulsar, Rook takes an uneasy step back.

Burke kicks his way out of the lead car, hitting the ground boots first, and has his gun trained on her before anyone can say  _'but_ _why, sir? why do you hate me?'_

"Hands up, rookie," he orders with grim satisfaction.

Rook scowls.

Resistance fighters pile out of the other trucks to back him up, well-armed and sporting determined expressions. No friends of hers.

Head low, a deep rumble vibrating in his throat, Boomer bristles at her side. But they're out of cover and Rook is out of bad ideas. The magnopulsar takes up both her hands and she's too afraid to drop it. Damn.

"Terrible timing," she tells Burke flatly.

"I said, hands up!" he warns, clicking the safety off his magnum threateningly. "Now."

And she's not going to risk all of time and space for the look on Cameron Burke's face when she flips an SUV on its head.

(Even she's not that stupid.)

Rook sets the magnopulsar down -  _gently_ \- and lifts her hands in the air.

The resistance sweeps in, fanning out into the building and the open yard behind her. Calling out the location of each body as it's found. Burke clearly has them better organized than she ever did, which only salts the wound.

They make her feel displaced, a freak from a radioactive future. She should have been one of them. Unforgivable that she's not.

Boomer barks loud and angry when Burke starts to approach her.

"Easy, boy," she soothes before he can do anything.

Anxious, he paws at the ground and whines.

"Easy," she repeats as calm as she can. "Sit."

Unhappily, he obeys.

Burke, lucky for him, doesn't do more than snort as he slaps the cuffs on her.

(Hands in front because he's never learned his lesson arresting a Seed sibling before.)

The metal closes cold around her wrists.

"I'm taking this traitor to the jail," Burke informs his people brusquely. "You make sure this place doesn't fall back into peggie hands."

Rook's shoulders hunch. Fuck no, not the jail, she thinks to herself piteously. Not  _Whitehorse_. She can't face him, he's worse than Dutch.

Indifferent to her internal panic, Burke confiscates her gun, radio, and all her grenades. (Bastard. It's like he doesn't care if she lives or dies.)

Marching her to the SUV, he yanks the side-door open.

"Get in."

Clumsy, Rook hauls herself into the back seat.

It's messy, a blood-stained towel and crushes cans lying around on the floor. Hunching over her hands, smaller than necessary as she scoots to the far side, Rook slides the lockpicks out of her belt. They poke into her palms as she kicks empty cans away from her feet.

The sticky smell of an energy drink spills out, mixing badly with the sent of stale coffee lingering in the air.

Slamming the door on her, Burke stomps back to issue a few more last minute orders to his subordinates. Rook presses her face to the window for one last glimpse of the magnopulsar and Boomer drooping beside it.

If they're lucky, the resistance will leave it alone. No one had believed Larry when he tried to tell them about Mars. No one had believed Rook. It'll be safe enough to leave it here until she can give her latest captors the slip.

Determined, she rolls the lockpicks in her fingers.

US Marshal Burke can call this an arrest if he wants, but Rook knows an abduction when it threatens her at gunpoint.

* * *

They drive south, headed for the nearest bridge.

For a while, Rook can hear Boomer barking as he chases them. But soon enough they build up speed, and leave him behind. She looks back, but can't see anything besides trees and the distant green-grey flash of the river.

Awkwardly, she tries to get a pick into the lock of her cuffs.

Between the rough ride and the effort of keeping her actions hidden, she can't quite seem to make her lucky escape.

As they approach the border of the valley, Burke clears his throat pointedly.

Caught, Rook's eyes dart up to meet his in the mirror.

They shine with Bliss.

She jolts back, an instinctive flinch, and drops her picks all over the seat as the car makes a sharp left turn.

"Do you only judge people by appearances, deputy?" Faith demands, anger ringing clearly through the cab. "Will you only listen to the truth if it comes from a familiar face? I thought you were better than that. I thought you would have learned by now."

Fuck, Rook thinks blankly. Fuck, not Burke. She was supposed to have rescued him before the Bliss took hold. She  _saved_ him.

His gaze remains fixed on her in the mirror, navigating the road without even having to look, mouthing the words along with the radio.

She hopes to God the voice is coming from the radio.

Faith sighs, pained.

"Things weren't supposed to happen this way," she muses, dropping into childish melancholy. "It's my fault. I've been too nice. But now I see that you won't ever return that kindness. You don't choose to respond with anything but violence."

Cuffed hands tugging uselessly at the handle of the door, Rook's stomach knots with fear. They're crossing the bridge over the river now, wheels bumping rhythmically over the wooden boards.

"Marshal," she tries, fumbling at the lock. "Marshal Burke, can you hear me?"

(Sweat beads his forehand, his hands trembling on the wheel.)

" _Burke_."

He doesn't answer.

Rook gives up on him, and the child-locked door. But she won't go down into that bunker. Not again.

"Angel means 'messenger' in Greek," Faith says raptly, sharing something special. "Did you know that? They descend from heaven to whisper holy secrets in the ears of the faithful." She giggles, only to stop with a gasp of delight like she's had the  _best_ idea. "Do you want to know my secret?"

With an angry noise of denial, Rook jams her thumb into the button that will roll the window down.

(This is going to suck.)

With an electric hum, the glass slides down. Wind whips around Rook's face. Hot and dusty, polluted with Bliss and the mineral springs. They're over the bridge, out of the valley, and unquestionably in Faith's territory now.

Burke doesn't react to the open window, his eyes hazed over and mouth still slackly parroting Faith's words.

Oblivious, she says, "I welcomed the light into my soul-"

Rook hooks her arms up through the window, fingers slipping and clutching for balance, and hurls herself out.

The back wheels thunder by as she tumbles to the side of the road. Curling into a ball, she rolls into the ditch. Dry earth crumbles on her skin, and she shoves herself up as fast as her aching limbs can move.

Up the road, the SUV screeches to a stop.

Rook stumbles the first few steps, gait smoothing out as she starts running back the way they came. In the distance, getting closer, she can hear a dog barking.

A car door slams as Burke leaps out to give chase.

"You're so lost," calls Faith. "You keep running, deputy, but don't you see? You have nowhere to go." Even using Burke's lungs, she doesn't sound winded.  "I was like you once. I was lost and all alone. Surrounded by people who only wanted to use me. And then, everything changed!"

Rook lowers her head and sprints.

"How long are you going to pretend nothing is wrong?" Faith demands, voice echoing in the green mist curling from the Bliss fields beside the road. "Do you think you can act like it doesn't matter-"

With a snarl, Boomer races past Rook, and flings himself on Burke.

Off-balance, she trips over her own feet and crashes to the ground.

Behind her, Burke goes down with a choked cry entirely his own.

Boomer snaps, wet and furious, an awful tearing sound as he lunges for the throat.

And Burke's voice sputters out.

Eyes closing, Rook stops trying to get up.

(that wasn't supposed to happen)

Boomer's nails click on the asphalt as he trots back to her.

He drops Burke's magnum by her hand with a clatter, whuffing hopefully for a treat.

When she doesn't respond, he nudges his nose into her face. Something smears, sticky, on her cheek. He pants in her ear, doggy-breath heavy with the effort of running all the way after them.

Her hands, still cuffed, reach up to pat his side.

"Good boy, Boomer," she praises him quietly. "Good boy."

(it's not his fault)

He sprawls beside her, weary but alert. Watching over her as she continues lying in the middle of the road. Rook rests her cheek against the asphalt and keeps her eyes closed. She could swear she hears the Bliss flowers rustling to each other in the field. Sweet the whisper, soft the sound.

It will be so loud, when all this burns.

She should get up. There's an outpost at the truck stop around the bend. Not even Boomer can protect her from the reinforcements.

But the road is warm and stable as she lies on her stomach. Rook shifts her shoulder against the old pavement, feeling the alligator pattern of fatigue cracks in its surface. Her fingers rub at the double-yellow line. Sliding over cool, soothing texture of paint. The cuffs rattle and clink when she sits up.

Burke is gone.

But he'll be back. At least for now he's not anyone's puppet. For two whole months, he'll be free. Not as free as Hudson, but better than nothing.

That's real. In this fucked up hellscape, that's a real thing.

Head aching, Rook slumps over her knees. She's got a raw scrape on her lower jaw from where she tripped. She's got dog-drool and Burke's blood on her other cheek.

Boomer, still recovering from his run, wags his tail tiredly at her. His tongue lolls pink between bloody teeth. Her good boy.

Rubbing grit off her face, Rook gives him a wavering smile.

But her feet drag as she leaves him to approach Burke.

He lies on his back, arms and legs rag-doll limp. Another body to scavenge. Another bump on the long road to world's end.

Getting the keys out of his pocket, Rook avoids looking anywhere but her own hands. Fingers cramping at the angle, she twists the tiny key around until the handcuffs open.

They clatter across the pavement, skittering away into the ditch with the force of her throw.

Burke stares up at the sky, mouth and throat gaping open.

Carefully, she presses his eyelids closed.

"You deserve better," she admits, looking at the tiny gold cross around his neck. "I don't know what else to do for you."

(It was always too late to save him.)

Ready to be anywhere else, she freezes in the act of pushing to her feet.

There's a flash of the wrong color in the red ruin of his throat.

Frowning, Rook squints at it.

Something pokes through the tissue of his broken skin, a pale line of green. Confused, she tugs at it, fingers sliding, until it tears and she brings away a thin scrap to examine. Blood drips warm down her knuckles and into her glove. The delicate tissue of a leaf bruises between her fingers.

Bliss.

Rook recoils, dropping the leaf instantly. It flutters from her grasp to rest on Burke's chest. Wiping her fingers frantically on her shirt, she sucks in a low, choked noise of disbelief. More leaves are visible in his esophagus, ragged where Boomer's teeth tore through them. Rolled together inside it like butterfly wings in a chrysalis. Waiting to burst free.

"What the fuck," Rook breathes to the vast, looming emptiness of the Henbane. "What the actual fuck."

Alive in the damp, bleeding dark of his throat, Bliss leaves rustle gently and begin to unfurl. Soft and sweet and  _alien_.

* * *

In front of the Copperhead station-house, John paces around the odd device, nudging to with the toe of one shoe.

"This was what the Deputy carried?" he asks again, dubious.

"Yes," a resistance fighter, not so resistant now, swears fervently. "Yes, that's it!"

With a thoughtful scowl, John nudges it again. The machine looks exactly as bizarre as it had when he first laid eyes on it. But thus far, all the surviving sinners have sworn up and down that the Deputy had been attempting to carry it off when they found her.

John remains skeptical. His anger is only somewhat mollified by the revelation that she had not, in fact, flung herself willfully back into the arms of her precious resistance. But, intentional or not, that had certainly been the end result.

And as usual, his people suffered for it.

Down in the trees, he can hear them singing as they go about the unpleasant work of burying the bodies of their fallen brothers and sisters.

The Deputy has definitely been here.

Unfortunately, he seems to have missed her.

 _Again_.

John's nails bite into his wrist, one foot tapping as he glowers at his only clue.

He doesn't have  _time_ to wander the land, solving some ridiculous puzzle of Larry Parker's making. More importantly, he doesn't want to. He'd much rather drag the Deputy into the safety of the bunker and spend the next seven years proving some very pointed arguments about the power of yes. As always, however, it seems his preferences matter little in the grand scheme of things.

Yet again, he has been abandoned in favor of Larry Parker's mysterious allure.

The lash of disappointment bites deep, because he'd truly thought they were past this.

But clearly the Deputy has little care for her own soul. He's not surprised. She's never shown much sign of self-preservation.

John bends over and lifts the ungainly device with a grimace of effort.

It's heavier than it looks.

"What is it?" he asks, inspecting its central ring and the odd toggles running along its outside.

"Ah! I don't - know," the sinner admits, spurred by a judicious kick to the knee. "The Marshal took her straight into custody when we arrived. Just like he's going to take you and all the rest of your crazy fucking family, you  _monster!_ "

Brushing aside the threat, John doesn't bother to dignify that with a response.

He also remains unconvinced that the Deputy will remain in anyone's hands for long.

Besides his, of course.

The machine's lights blink, green and red and blue. Whatever it is, it appears to be armed. Examining the various labels etched into the casing, he finds one reading  _portable magnetic field generator_. Which, while informative, does little to explain either the purpose of the device or the Deputy's interest in it.

The weight of the machine drags at his arms, straining his ribs. Before getting shot point blank in Parker's name, he'd had the undeniable pleasure of hearing real fear in the Deputy's voice.

_you didn't, you shouldn't, you haven't_

He considers his options, fingers caressing the double-triggers.

It wouldn't do to ignore the word of a prophet, certainly.

On the other hand, she's full of sin.

John squeezes the triggers.

The device spins up, aimed loosely at the chain-link fence. Lights shimmer inside the ring, power thrumming. John tucks his tongue against his teeth to feel them buzz. The droning hum reaches a new pitch, high and urgent.

An ache pierces straight down the roots of John's teeth.

With a jerk, a wave of force hits the fence.

It rattles.

"Hm."

John looks from the machine in his hands, to the fence, and back again.

Then he drops it unceremoniously in the dirt.

"Well, that was a somewhat disappointing climax," he remarks. "Now, where did you say the Marshal was going?"

* * *

Rook speeds along the highway, headed for the jail.

Going to Whitehorse with the truth isn't a great plan, but she has to do  _something_.

A thin layer of clouds blocks the sun, the light falling harshly on birch trees and sere brown grass. Sudden bluffs and steep pitfalls break up the landscape around the river, the dramatic highs and lows of the Henbane. Hiding its fields of heavy, perfumed flowers, swarming with mindless drones. And Faith, spider queen bee, sitting with her pretty ankles crossed in the middle of it all. Plucking the threads to make the Angels dance.

Half-way to the Hope County Jail, Rook stops.

She brakes hard, the SUV burning rubber until it skids to a sideways stop.

"Bliss grows in people," Rook tries telling the empty passenger seat. "It grows inside them."

The passenger seat judges her silently.

She tries again.

"Joseph Seed's garden metaphors just got a hell of a lot more disturbing."

The passenger seat would jump out of this car and leave her to die, if it weren't bolted in.

Groaning, Rook thumps her head back.

Fuck, this is crazy talk. Local doomsday cult dumps hallucinogenic weeds in the water to make people agreeable? Everyone knows that. But murderous plant-people stalking the fields? That's what lunatics like Larry Parker and Zip Kupka babble on about in tinfoil hats and trailer-labs.

No more real than aliens, or time travel, or the apocalypse.

Despair creeping over her, Rook stares up at the grey interior of the car.

What would it change if anyone believed her this time, anyway?

Burning the Henbane two months early won't erase the fact that the world is going to end, spin backwards, and spit her out on a cloudless summer day with no friends, no explanation, and no bright ideas beyond 'fuck this shit.' Rook slumps, defeated.

Her only chance to change fate was months (years?) ago, when she walked into Joseph's church the first time.

There's no getting that back.

Not like the resistance can help her unravel the mysteries of time, the universe, and everything. Not like the cult would if they could.

They  _want_ the world to end. And - wish fucking granted - that's what it's doing. Now everyone gets to enjoy the full 3D experience: front row seats and re-runs forever.

Weary, she restarts the engine.

It's too late to tell anyone the truth. But there is one thing she can set right. Once she buries the magnopulsar fathoms deep in the caverns beneath the old Orville place, everyone will be a little bit safer.

(So long as, you know, they don't get murdered by each other or unfriendly forest creatures. Or the fucking _Bliss_. Dammit.)

The SUV rumbles powerfully around her as she performs an awkward, many-pointed turn in the tight space of the road.

Speeding back to the valley, she retreads her steps with blood on her hands.

Same old, same old.

But Burke kept more than instant coffee and energy drinks under his seats. Steadying the wheel with her knees while she rummages around the floor - a stupid move if there ever was one - Rook drags out a medkit. Balancing it on her lap, she flips up the cheerful yellow lid and fishes out the rubbing alcohol.

The blood on her fingers flakes off, cold as the alcohol evaporates from her skin. She dabs at her hands, steering with her elbows, tossing used tissues and her dirty gloves into the back seat. In no time at all, it's like she never reached into a dead man's throat and pulled out living Bliss.

(World's worst miracle.)

Her chin smarts terribly when she cleans the scrape along her jaw, fumes stinging her eyes and prickling in her nose. Rook sets her teeth as her eyes water, the road ahead wavering in her vision. ( _No point crying about it, rookie._ ) But she doesn't veer off the road, and she doesn't hit any pronghorn, so that's a win.

The medkit gets dumped in the passenger seat, where Burke left her gun and her grenades.

And her radio.

Reaching over on a masochistic impulse, she turns the volume up as she follows the Henbane river west.

"-truly wanted to believe that," John is saying, broadcasting on a wide spectrum. Keeping Faith's voice at bay. "But it seems we must add dishonesty to the list of your sins."

He sounds pissed; he must have figured out by now that she wasn't planning to attend whatever little ambush he had planned.

A humorless smile tugging at one lip, Rook reaches to turn the radio off again. But she missed a spot of blood on her knuckle and, by the time she's done scrubbing it off on her shirt, there are two trucks and an ATV of peggies on her tail.

Ducking low in her seat, firing wildly backwards out the window, she fish-tail dangerously all the way to the bridge into Holland Valley.

John talks to her the entire time.

"Consider the company you keep, Deputy. Your attempt to ... rescue Marshal Burke, misguided as it was, how has it ended? Has he embraced you as his savior? Has anyone? No. Like you, these sinners are afflicted with arrogance, ungratefulness, and  _wrath_."

The crash of the ATV flipping over behind her momentarily drowns him out. Rook reloads and accelerates. Almost across the bridge.

Audible again, John keeps going too. "Sin infects your every action, eats away at your good intentions - if they are good - and twists them into a scourge on everyone around you. And just when I  _thought_ we were taking steps towards salvation together," he sighs over the sound of the magnum barking in her ear, "It seems that instead you have once again led yourself astray."

Rook spins the wheel around, tires screeching in an abrupt 180, shooting through her own windshield to kill the last driver as he desperately brakes. Glass breaks, spraying all over the dash. Rook shakes it off her hands, hauling the car around again, and tries not to feel so goddam guilty as she leaves nothing but wreckage behind her.

"You might think I don't understand the fear that keeps you from putting yourself under the knife. I do. But a cancer of the soul can't be cured unless it is cut out at the heart. Trust me, I know."

Riddled with bullets, glass sliding off the hood in diamond fragments, the SUV limps down the road to the railyard.

"Whenever you're ready to talk, Deputy, I'll be right here. I'll even forgive you."

Pinned to the Burke's dash, there's a ragged picture of a tropical beach. A snapshot sunset with its own little palm tree. Rook touches two fingers to it sadly, and feels something tore open last night rip wider with regret.

She wants to say it doesn't matter.

But she can't.

* * *

John sets the radio down precisely on a convenient crate, feeling some measure of his frustrations relieved.

There's more to say, naturally, but he suspects that he's given the Deputy enough to chew on for the moment. He has to take it on faith that she heard his message. And, if providence favors him, Burke's hasty attempt at arresting her will only serve to emphasize what he's been trying to communicate all along.

That only the Project - more specifically John himself - has her best interests at heart.

Unexpectedly, the radio crackles.

"John."

He grabs it, hope surging at the sound of the Deputy's voice.

Bluntly, she asks, "Where are you?"

"At the Copperhead Railyard, setting things back in order." He grins, almost dizzy with anticipation. "Where are  _you_ , Deputy?"

She doesn't answer.

John can't find it in himself to mind.

She's keeping her promise.

The hours of doubt are over. The Deputy is coming to him and all his previous frustration is _worth_ it for the unadulterated triumph flooding his veins now. He can wash them both clean, and the real work can begin.

He's pacing sharply in front of the station-house, fingers tapping quickly against his key, when a battered car pulls into the crowded drive.

The Deputy gets out.

Ignoring the rifles the faithful immediately point her way, and John's hasty wave at them to stand down, she stalks straight up to him.

And then right past to pick up Larry Parker's device from the ground.

Jaw bloody and shirt a mess, bare hands clutching her trophy, she turns around with an unsteady light burning in her eyes.

"You coming?" she demands, marching back to her car.

John, charmed completely, follows without hesitation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, you guys! This chapter was a beast. And I was maybe a little distracted by ND. But behold! today's chapter features all the Seeds except Joseph, who isn't mad ... he's just disappointed. (Picture not found.) The alternate title was: Rook and John have very different ideas about how to get ready for a date.


	10. say again

Rook races southward, risking the main roads for the sake of speed.

If she stops, she'll think twice about her plan. Not to mention the presence of John: lounging sideways in the passenger seat, body angled to watch her as she watches the road. Wearing his sunglasses properly for once, eyes hidden. The mirror-blue lenses catch the light, throwing reflections of her hunched form back at her. What John was thinking - hopping voluntarily into a car with her - remains a mystery.

Not that Rook cares.

He'll keep until she takes care of the magnopulsar. Then he's going to tell her everything she needs to know to destroy the Bliss. That's the plan.

(It'll  _work_.)

Wind rushes through the broken windshield, dry and sweet with dust from the fields. Ruffling the loose sleeves of her T-shirt, tugging at the collar of John's coat. Too loud to talk. Not that she hasn't heard it all before anyway. Not that she has anything to say.

( _so, crazy Armageddon we've been having, huh?_ )

Light bounces off the SUV's hood, glinting along the bullet-holes scored in its bright yellow star. Shadows stretch a little longer from the roadsigns, sun shining a little paler in the autumn sky. But even in the shade of the cab, the temperatures are too high. Heat shivers on the pale grey pavement ahead, asphalt crumbling black at the edges where it slumps down into shallow ditches. Leading to a very personal hell.

Aching from the last time she threw herself out of this car, Rook speeds up.

She's running on nothing but desperation and short-lived fury. A temporary adrenaline high that's beginning to crash. She has no clue where they'll end up when it does. The magnopulsar rests in the back seat: a lurking reminder of just how much damage stupidity can do.

Her hands tighten, yanking the wheel right and then left past the grain elevator.

Fuck John for saying  _yes_ to every bad plan that comes his way.

Especially hers.

( _funny story, I shot you like, five or six times_ )

He shifts a little, stretching his legs. One lazy hand splayed out on the armrest, the tattoos dark on his fingers. The tilt of his mouth undeniably pleased.

Like he was just  _waiting_ for someone to march into his outpost and practically kidnap him.

He catches her looking and smiles, unexpectedly sweet.

Rook's fingers slip a little on the wheel. Hyper-aware of every inch of space between them. Heart stuttering sick as the SUV's straining engine, wind chilling the sweat on the back of her neck.

His sunglasses hide everything except his smile.

Petty, she snatches them right off his face.

John straightens up with an indignant squawk, moment broken. Setting the sunglasses firmly down on her own nose, ignoring how they slip, Rook refuses to acknowledge him. A word that might be  _greed_ snatched away by the wind unanswered.

They're nice glasses, the polarized world easy on the eyes. An appealing spectrum of blue and grey. She can feel the muscles in her neck relax as she no longer has to squint against the light.

John sulks, drawing himself back in the seat to scowl at her from farther away.

His mood of contentment successfully ruined.

( _wake up, stupid, it's not safe_ )

They bump across a little bridge, heading into the hills beyond the southernmost loop of the Henbane.

Rook breathes a sigh of relief as they make it to the last turn-off, escaping into the backwoods along an old dirt road. A weedy stripe of grass grows right down the middle of it, old tire tracks on either side. The wind cools with the comforting scents of pine bark and tree-sap. Good cover.

But there's nowhere to hide with John Seed in her car.

The road follows the gentle rise and fall of the hills as they wind along the cliffs of the southern valley. Not many people come out this way. But Rook has dragged her wounded, bleeding body all over the county often enough to know that the old Wellington shack - and the unfinished mine beneath it - is prime real estate.

No matter how much she hates caves, they make excellent hiding places.

Angling the rearview mirror, she double-checks that her marvel of technological time-fuckery hasn't raptured itself out of existence or anything else unlikely and horrible. It hasn't. Sitting innocently in the backseat, the shimmer of light along its metal ring muted by the tint of her sunglasses, the magnopulsar sits exactly where she left it.

Damn.

Antagonizing John is so much easier than confronting what she's really afraid of here.

So Rook deals with the tension the only way she knows how: by flooring the accelerator and crossing her fingers.

The battered SUV roars to new life.

John yelps, clutching his seat as the whole car shakes into high speed.

Accelerating around the last curve, coughing in the smoke that erupts from the engine, Rook realizes abruptly that the road  _ends_ at Orville Creek.

They skid hard, tires digging deep grooves where the ground turns muddy, momentum fighting the brakes.

But they stop in time. Engine dying with a sad, accusatory rattle. Inches from a messy crash in a dead-end overlook.

Slightly stunned, neither Rook nor John moves.

Ahead of them, the road ends with a sharp, rocky plunge into a deep channel cut by the water. Churning fast and violent, the creek foams down the cliffs in a set of waterfalls. Deep blue in the sun.

A bit of glass falls from where it was clinging to the frame of the windshield, tinkling over the dash.

"I take it we've arrived," John says dryly, the first to recover.

Staring blankly at the little footbridge over the creek, Rook nods.

"Excellent." Unfolding dramatically, he brushes road-dust off his cheeks and straightens his coat. "Let me know if you plan on driving us anywhere else today. I'd like a moment to prepare my soul to depart my body."

Suddenly, she can't unbuckle her seatbelt fast enough.

"Stay here then," she mutters to her boots as she all but trips over herself to get out.

John wastes no time throwing open his own door and chasing after her.

"These tests are unnecessary, Deputy," he protests as he comes around the front of the car to join her. "I'm following you, of course."

Throwing the sunglasses back at him, forcing him to grab them in a surprised fumble, Rook drags out the magnopulsar. Its handles slip a little in her shaking fingers, textured plastic sun-warm from lying under the window. Ugly and ungainly in her hands. Hoisting it up, she dodges around John. Anxious to get some distance between them. Until the magnopulsar is off her mind, she shouldn't be trying to talk to him.

(Whatever he knows isn't worth the sheer _aggravation_.)

He catches up before she reaches the bridge.

"It was my impression, Deputy, that when we agreed to have this conversation-"

"Abduction."

" _Excuse_ me?"

Rook takes a stand against his scandalized disbelief as best she can with the magnopulsar weighing her down.

"This is an abduction," she tries again, planting her feet firmly in the muddy earth. Then, because it seems important to be clear on this point: "I abducted you."

John's eyes narrow.

"You did  _not_."

So he's going to be stubborn about it.

"You're a prisoner," insists Rook, desperate to put them back on familiar footing. "Stay with the car and don't go anywhere."

John side-steps around her hurriedly to block the bridge, hands braced on the railings with indignant strength.

"You're being childish, Deputy. Why?"

Rook attempts to shoulder past him, but he refuses to budge. Unintimidated by the business-end of the magnopulsar shoving into his chest. Blue eyes snapping with anger.

Unless she wants to vaporize him out of her life for a few months of forever - or shove him down a deep dark pit - he's not going anywhere.

Drooping, Rook loses steam.

She can't handle John and the magnopulsar ( _and_ her phobia of the dark) all at once. It's too much, too weird, too awful. Maybe that should have occurred to her before she impulsively collected a free cultist along with her alien ray-gun, but it hadn't. And her whole plan for what to do after this depends on her ability to get useful information out of John Seed.

What the fuck was she thinking.

Miserable and awkward under his glower, Rook stares at her boots.

"Ah," he says finally, in the tone of someone solving a crappy riddle. "You're trying to wriggle out of our deal by claiming that I didn't come along willingly and am therefore in breach of the agreement."

"What?"

Shaken out of her self-pity, Rook squints at him.

"Well," John talks right over her with haughty disdain, "Let me assure you,  _Deputy_ , that I intend to _stick_ with you until you deliver on your promise. So don't think for a second you can talk your way out on a technicality."

Rook scrunches her face, confused.

Fucking  _lawyer_.

Giving up on him, she shakes her head.

"Whatever. Fine. Just - let me cross the bridge. I've got something to do on the other side. Then we'll talk."

Triumphant, John turns sideways to let her pass with insincere courtesy.

"I'll hold you to that."

His smile is a lot different from the one earlier.

Squeezing past him, the bulk of the magnopulsar between them just in case he tries to shove her off the bridge, Rook regrets her whole stupid life.

A breeze blows the spray of the waterfall over them, water beading on their hair and eyelashes. Rust marks the steel rivets holding the wooden bridge together. Heavy in the air around her, John's presence takes on a sharp, warning edge. He crowds her all the way across, so close on her heels he actually steps on the backs of her boots more than once. Determined not to be left behind.

(If he makes one comment about the view from behind her, one of them  _will_ make a dive into that creek.)

Nerves jumping, Rook can't quite focus on the cyclical problem of John Seed's temper. Too consumed by her immediate goals. The magnopulsar. A place the light won't find. The trail signs on the bridge ( _danger, you idiot_ ) caution her against it.

Five minutes in the dark, she promises herself. Far below, Orville Creek sparkles in the sun. Rook turns her face up, desperate for the freedom of open sky before she goes underground. Five minutes,  _tops_.

Not like the whole mine shaft will collapse just because she chose today to walk inside it. That would be-

"Stupid."

"What?" John asks over her shoulder, ears sharp enough to catch her mumbling under the gurgle of water.

"Nothing," Rook covers quickly, seizing on the distraction. "How, uh, how's your chest? Since I ... shot you."

(fuck conversation, fucking seriously fucking throw her and the magnopulsar off the fucking bridge fuck)

"Oh, my bruises are healing, Deputy, never fear." Cruelly delighted, John eyes the side of her face. "Yours, however, might linger after atonement."

Rook makes a vaguely strangled noise.

Nope, forget feeling bad about it. She picks up the pace as they cross into the woods again. The dirt footpath leading them through an overgrown fence. Ignoring all the warning signs. (no trespassing private property  _keep out_ )

John saunters after her, obscenely cheerful now that the topic of confession has reared its ugly, inevitable head.

When will Boomer catch up? She desperately needs someone with good people-skills here. She lost hers somewhere along the way.

Probably around the time that both Larry  _and_ Joseph ended up being right about aliens, Armageddon, and her general uselessness in the face of both.

That fucked her up.

Catching sight of the Wellington shack through the trees, she stops abruptly.

John, still too close, nearly trips over her.

" _Sh_ ," Rook shushes him preemptively.

The hair on her arms prickles, instinct warning of unseen danger.

A peggie strolls out of the shack.

Rook ducks behind a convenient boulder before he gets all the way over the threshold, swearing as she crouches down. (John in her peripheral, following suit.) One visible enemy means at least two more out of sight. Propping the magnopulsar against the rock, she unholsters her gun.

"Wait," John objects, grabbing her by the arm. "What do you think you're doing?"

Frowning, Rook mimes shooting with her gun.

Because obviously she's going to take care of the trigger-happy religious extremists before they report her location to ... the person next to her.

Dammit.

John reads the realization crossing her face, observing her chagrin with a dawning light of gleeful superiority.

"Have you ever considered solving your problems without violence, Deputy?" he asks, unfairly self-righteous. "Or are you so steeped in wrath that you enjoy leaving a trail of bodies in your wake?"

(She doesn't.)

Rook peers around the boulder, mumbling defensively, "They're already dead."

"What does  _that_ mean?" he demands, grabbing her shoulder when she doesn't answer. " _Deputy_." His volume forces her to face him before he gets them caught. "What do you mean, are they - going to die in the Collapse?"

Everyone is.

But she can't say it.

Instead, she tries reasoning.

"No one should know. That-" the magnopulsar "-I was here."

His outrage redoubles at her attempt to explain. "These are  _people_ , Deputy! Do you care so little that you'll go out of your way to end their lives prematurely? You're supposed to be _saving_ them."

Rook hesitates, torn.

(When did her conscience start sounding like  _John Seed_?)

"I don't suppose it even occurred to you that I might be able to solve this little problem for you," he says bitterly into her silence.

Rook blinks.

(It ... hadn't?)

"Oh, for - wait here." He shoves her back, stepping out into the open before she can stop him.

"John!" she hisses, "John, don't-"

"Brothers and sisters!" he calls out loudly, striding right down the middle of the path. "Good morning!"

Fuck.

Tucking her gun into the waistband of her pants, hearing someone call out enthusiastic blessings of the Father, Rook crouches low to the ground.

Waiting until everyone's eyes are on John (more than six people in total appearing from the general area), she digs in her heels.

And springs out of hiding.

Her feet pound briefly across the open ground, little puffs of dust drifting gold in the sun.

Leaving the magnopulsar behind, she slides into safety on the opposite side of the path. Pebbles and leaf-debris scraping under her as she fetches up behind a gravel heap. Poking her head out cautiously, low in the shadow of the cliffs, she checks for signs of alarm.

No one noticed her. Too busy with John.

The  _best_ distraction, she swears.

"-down there, sir," one of the women is saying in response to some question, low voice carrying to Rook only in snatches. "Not sure how long - but, with permission-"

Unseen, Rook draws herself back into the underbrush to weigh her options.

A full clip of ammo, seven targets.

And, clinging to the eaves of the shack, the papery swirls of a hornet's nest. An instrument of universal fear. Drawing her gun, Rook lines up her sights.

And waits for the instant that John betrays her.

He doesn't.

Instead, he levels his persuasive smile on the other cultists, sending them tripping all over themselves. Rook watches with suspicion as an air of energetic enthusiasm takes over the shack, several peggies trooping back inside it. Headed down into the mine?

Wary, Rook stays right where she is.

A warm breeze tickles the bare skin of her arms. Rustling in the branches overhead. The gritty dust of the gravel pile clings to her tongue, fresh scents of fir and pine like a sharp aftertaste. Hornets swarm by the shack, dark little bodies shining in the sun.

Palms sweating inside her gloves, her fingers beginning to cramp, she brings her other hand up to brace the weight of the gun.

Meanwhile, John chats casually with one or two of his favorites as the others gather up various bits of equipment. Packing up to leave. Rook observes the process with growing bemusement. Should she shoot them anyway? On general principle. Just to be safe.

She doesn't.

(Is this a trap or a bribe?)

Finally, the last scruffy cultist emerges to rejoin the group hanging on John's every word.

Rook, who caught something early about the follies of wrath, is determinedly  _not listening_.

A gaggle of Angels staggers out of the shack.

Terrified, her finger finds the trigger.

Self-preservation argues strongly against firing.

The Angels mill around in the sunlight, bare feet dirty and torn from the rocks down in the mine. Bigger than hornets. More dangerous when provoked.

Clinging to her self-control, Rook switches aim to the gas cans being carried by a peggie woman. Fuck John. If he didn't want to be on fire, he shouldn't have blindsided her with  _fucking Angels_.

But they're leaving.

Muscles tensed to strike first, Rook watches warily as everyone waves happily to John, shepherding their Angelic charges along cheerfully as they march away down the road.

She remains absolutely motionless as they pass.

Listening to them chatter happily as they disappear out of sight.

When there's nothing left but birdsong and the chirp of insects, John clears his throat dramatically.

"Well?" he calls, "Stop being a coward and come out, Deputy!"

Prying her hands off the gun one aching finger at a time, Rook digs herself out of her gravelly hiding place and goes to join him.

John eyes her smugly, not even surprised that she's not where he left her.

"There." He meets her halfway, arms out to indicate their empty surroundings. "See how easy trust can be?"

"Thanks," she says slowly, not entirely sure how she feels about the fact that John Seed just saved her from wandering into a death-trap of Angels.

Grinning smug, he watches her with expectant eyes.

"Now what"

"You stay here."

"What!" He throws up his hands in indignation. "I told you, I-"

"John."

The seriousness in her tone gives him pause, putting a hitch in his angry protestations of virtue.

"Ten minutes. Down and back. Then we'll - talk."

(if she can get the words out)

He considers her narrowly.

"Trust," she reminds him in an attempt to appeal to his skewed - and yet horribly overactive - moral compass.

But there's six bullets in his head between them (loop after loop of silence on the radio) so the lie hangs awkwardly on her tongue.

After a moment of intense study, the fervent light in his eyes warring with the impatient tap of his fingers, John backs down with a huff.

"Ten minutes," he emphasizes crisply. "Very well, Deputy. But I suggest you finish your business here quickly. Your appointment with confession is long overdue."

Rook sighs, and goes to fetch the magnopulsar from behind its rock.

Surely by the time it's safe in its new home, she'll have figured out what to do about John. (She's starting to suspect he'll fight  _hard_ if she tries to walk away this time.)

Giving him - and the hornets - wide berth, she ducks inside the shack. He trails after her, radiating an irritable curiosity. Picking her way through the debris inside, fallen walls and dirt, she ignores everything but the ragged hole in the floor. The entrance to the Wellington mine.

Hooking one arm through the center ring of the magnopulsar, she sets her feet on the ladder down.

"I'll be waiting right here, Deputy," John calls after her as she descends.

Earth closing in around her, magnopulsar banging into her side, Rook barely hears him as she focuses tightly on the blue rungs of the ladder. Down and back. Easy.

It's only a little dark.

* * *

John, secure in the knowledge that he's guarding the only exit, graciously allows the Deputy her ten minutes. Today will be the day she recognizes these little games of hers only delay the inevitable. And if she refuses to come to understanding on her own, well, John will do his utmost to help strip her of her delusions.

Righting an old wooden chair, grimacing as red paint flakes off onto his sleeves, he gets himself comfortable. The seat creaks as he tips back into it. But it doesn't break.

Unlike the Deputy, who will be spilling herself in the dirt soon enough.

With nothing to do but martyr himself to patience, John broods.

Bizarre as it might seem, the Deputy is a  _prophet_. Surely her actions have some purpose, obscured from him, that will make all these quixotic detours make sense. If only he had the Father here to advise him. Joseph would have won her salvation already, he's sure. John crushes the envy that thought inspires, more than familiar with the self-doubt it springs from. He couldn't be as perfect as his brother if he tried. But, with the Deputy's soul in hand, he'll enter New Eden all the same.

Surely there, he'll feel nothing but joy.

Something pads in through the sagging door of the shack, animal soft.

Alarmed, he looks up to find himself confronted with the Deputy's dog.

"Well," John says in disgust. "This is hardly a surprise."

It growls.

Hastily, he raises his hands.

"Don't snap at  _me_ , you filthy animal,  _I_ was invited. Your presence, however, is hardly required."

Bristling, it slinks closer.

Fingers twitching for a knife, John tries to imagine what Jacob would do. Probably prove his authority in some horrifying, brute display. Or shoot it. But John knows that harming the Deputy's dog - the one creature on God's green Earth for whom her affection is reserved - will set him back in his purpose like nothing else.

He settles for staring it down.

It stares back with dark, liquid eyes. And then it sits, and pointedly looks away. Snubbed, John has no idea what to make of this behavior.

"I don't suppose I could persuade you to leave me in peace."

The beast, snuffling at the ground where the Deputy walked, settles down by the mine shaft with its head on its paws.

It whines softly.

"Yes, she stuffed herself down there. I can't imagine the appeal, but sin often blinds us to - Is that  _blood?_ " John demands, catching sight of the dark stains flecking the dog's jaws. "Oh, of course it is. You're as full of wrath as your master, you murderous creature."

The Deputy's cleansing might come first, but her mutt clearly requires a bath in the most literal sense. John puts it on his mental to-do list. Surely some of his people can handle it. The Deputy will thank him for that too, in the end.

Honestly, the lengths he goes to for the sake of a single soul.

"How the two of you stand being around around each other is a mystery to me," he informs the dog haughtily. "You both need a good scrubbing."

It just flicks an ear at him.

Huffing, John checks his watch. Every agonizing second she drags her feet here is going to add  _hours_ to her atonement. Consoling himself with the image of the Deputy tied to this very chair - kept waiting on  _his_ pleasure for once - he counts the seconds until her ten minutes are up.

* * *

There's Bliss in the mine.

Barrels of it lie everywhere, spilling thin green liquid onto the rocks. The fear of it drags at Rook's feet, magnified by the dark. A low mist swirling under her boots, full of unanswered questions. Only the driving need to get rid of the magnopulsar - albatross-heavy in her arms - keeps her from fleeing at once.

Hanging onto her determination by her fingernails, she stumbles on a flooded pit.

A small waterfall trickles down the wall of a big cave, filling the deep hole in the center of it. Draining into some deeper reservoir. Rook shivers on a ledge overlooking the water. She can't find the heart to lug herself across it.

A wide beam of sunlight filters in through a hole high above. Glowing bright on the surface of the water.

Rook wishes that it was close enough to climb out.

(The lights on the magnopulsar blink slowly in sequence: blue, red, green. Colors of the collapse.)

On the other side of the pit, an electric lantern lies fallen on its side. A little circle of distant yellow light illuminating the shadowy twists of further tunnels. She has some vague memory of a prepper stash in here somewhere, but no clear recollection of where. Probably cleared out by peggies and podpeople anyway.

Staring down at the water, Rook thinks about sharp rocks, and hidden outlets, and invisible currents dragging her down. She scuffs a foot against the stone. The tiniest scraping sound echoes, magnified. Damp air chills her skin, clammy and miserable.

Impulsively, she hefts the magnopulsar over her head.

"Okay," she says, "It's been real."

With a whole body heave, she flings the damned thing out into the water.

It hits with a gigantic splash, breaking the calm surface into a myriad of little waves. Water slaps noisily against the rocks. Lights wavering in the clear water, the magnopulsar sinks down into the depths. And disappears.

Rook watches it go with relief. Tension releasing in one long shudder, she breathes the air deeply. Her heart beats lighter without the responsibility of the magnopulsar weighing it down.

Even the cave doesn't seem so bad now, lit up by sunlight from outside as it is. Rook nods to herself, job well done. The best part is, she won't even have to  _think_ about Larry Parker's ray-gun until the next loop begins. And a lot can happen in two months. She could even catch a fish.

Ripples break at her feet, bright and cheerful on the surface of the dark water.

A butterfly lands on the toe of her boot.

Breath catching in surprise, coughing on a cloying scent, Rook staggers back from the water.

Faith stands on the other side.

Her white dress glows in the shadows, reflected light catching stray gleams of blond and green from her hair.

Trailing butterflies, Rook shakes dizzily.

Colors smear and burst in her vision, so beautiful she could cry.

"Do you know the story of Theseus, deputy?"

Dainty fingers close over Rook's, soft and insistent, coaxing her calloused hands away from the gun.

"He was a brave hero."

Faith swings her arms, spinning her around so they stand face-to-face. Rook stumbles through the move, clumsy as everything bends blue-red at the edges. She's too tall, big and awkward in her own body when compared to Faith's delicate grace. But that sweet smile catches her, eyes green as apple-bark peeling away from a young branch.

Featherlight wings brush the tips of her ears. Gently, Faith turns Rook's hands over. Holding them up so insects can land in her open palms. Iridescent blue wings flick open, black-brown spots of color. Rook trembles with the slow fanning motion. The instability of a butterfly's wing.

"Theseus wanted to save people. And one day," Faith's voice swoops low and compelling, golden in the dark. "He found himself in a labyrinth. But he wasn't afraid."

Inspired, she pulls Rook out onto the water with her, spinning them around in circles. Bright droplets spray up from their feet as they splash across, chasing the butterflies away. Faith laughs. Joyful as the crash of water back into the pool.

"He saw monsters around every corner," she tells Rook in a sing-song. "He defeated them all. Killing is so _ea_ sy isn't it?"

Rook trips as Faith lets her go. Dropping her on the opposite shore where the ground rises and falls underfoot without warning. Incomprehensible. Faith, a few steps ahead, lowers her arms in disappointment. The last butterflies scatter as her laughter dies. Bits of blue flying apart in sharp angles.

"The Marshal died scared and alone because of you!" she whirls on Rook without warning, vicious and pretty as a snake. "All he wanted was to be happy. But you - you ruin  _everything_."

The hole in the ceiling turns red, hazy green clouds boiling over the radioactive light. A deep rumble in the earth, Collapsing. Catching her shoulders, Faith drags Rook back down to look at her.

"Just like you, Theseus couldn't find a way out on his own," she says fiercely. "It took someone who loved him - someone who saw how lost and hurting he was! - to guide him through the maze. He couldn't get anywhere by himself." Her rich voice aches with scorned kindness. "And you think _you_ can do anything alone?"

Unexpectedly strong, she shoves Rook away.

Rook falls backwards, catching herself hard on her hands as she sprawls on the rocky floor. Tearing up at the shock of impact. Standing above her, Faith looks down with an awful kind of pity.

"No one is going to remember you."

Then she leans in and, as the mist begins to fall away, whispers in her ear.

"Walk the path."

Flinching, Rook crashes entirely back to earth.

Coming down fast and hard.

With a laugh, Faith dances away, bursting into a shower of white petals that melt into the water. Clouds of Bliss blooming down like fallout. Rook stops breathing with the fear of flowers in her throat, vines threading through muscle and tendon, petals and leaves dividing her tissues. Green pollen drifting from her mouth.

And then she can't hold her breath anymore and her gasps sob out in the vast, empty cavern.

The prepper's lantern lies just beyond the reach of her hand.

She has no idea how she crossed the water.

Her feet aren't even wet.

* * *

"My parents never wanted me to have a pet, you know," John tells the dog, contemplative. "Animals were too filthy. Prone to misbehavior. Bad influences. My parents - well, they couldn't tolerate anything that didn't learn its lesson the first time."

Tilting his head back, he sighs to the crooked rafters of the cabin. Inactivity has lured him into melancholy. The Deputy is  _late_. And her damn dog won't let him near the mine shaft. There's little better to do than brood.

"I suppose it's just as well." He recalls his childhood misdeeds with a frown. "I lost the habit of being gentle with my things at an early age."

His inability to relearn it has been a continual source of disappointment to the Father, and a source of unending frustration to John himself. He  _wants_ to be better. More giving, more loving. But his temper too often gets in the way.

"A dog would have been nice, though." He rubs at the marks on his knuckles. "What child doesn't want a best friend?"

Indifferent, the dog twitches one ear forward and back. Lying with its head on its paws, it stares down into the mine with a woeful air. Loyal to a fault.

"Naturally, I grew out of it." Defensive, he straightens up, brushing grime off the legs of his pants. "My parents were more than right about the dirt. Let Jacob keep his little menagerie of experiments to himself. I hardly think they're worth the effort."

The dog, clearly having learned its manners from the Deputy, ignores him.

John eyes it, wondering if he's finally lulled it into a state of complacency.

"Nevermind," he concludes, balancing his weight carefully on the edge of the chair. "I don't know about you - you pointless creature - but it seems to  _me_ that our dear Deputy has fallen down the well."

The dog leaps to its feet as he moves, but it isn't fast enough.

Catching the top rung of the ladder, John swings himself down before the feral monster can do more than snap at his heels.

It barks wildly at the top of the ladder, pacing the edge and whining every time its paws slip.

John looks up smugly from the bottom of the shaft.

"Stay right there."

He enters the mine, unreasonably pleased with himself.

The  _dog_ can't climb down ladders.

* * *

Head still sparkling with Bliss, Rook follows the broken tracks of an old mine cart to where the preppers made their last stand.

They're all dead.

The body of a broken Angel lies beside them, its head bashed in with a rock.

She kneels beside it, shaking.

A greenish vapor lingers, heavier than air.

(In the three-second glimpse she'd had of Mars, Larry Parker disappearing at her side, she'd a haze of light.)

Grabbing her utility knife, she wiggles it under the straps of the Angel's facemask.

The dirty white cloth lifts up to reveal a horror. Sore and lesions mottle the skin around its mouth and nose, old blood and yellow fluid crusting its chin. ( _His_ chin. The body was a man, friend and neighbor and family to someone once. Once of the many, many missing.)

Cautious, she pokes the mask all the way off.

Then she digs her little flashlight out of a pocket, clicks it on. Grimacing, she sticks two fingers inside the dead man's mouth and pries his jaw down. Hating the way the Bliss curls around her fingers. Heavy, lung-warm vapors. Bloody saliva slicking her knuckles.

What's inside is worse.

White, thready roots vein his cheeks and tongue, spreading from deeper inside the throat.

Rook swallows uncomfortably.

(How long does it take? Is she infected already?)

Slowly, she eases her fingers back out. Stumbles to a nearby shelf to grab a bottle of whiskey (fuck, does she need it) and dumps alcohol over both hands. The Bliss isn't infectious - too late for her if it _is_ \- but she feels better with alcohol soaking into her gloves. The little nicks and scratches sting as it evaporates. Her fingers slip on the cap of the bottle; she has to try three times before she gets it back on.

Then she shakes her head until her brain throbs, stuffy and squished, and goes back to the Angel.

"Sorry," she mutters to the corpse she's going to desecrate.

Behind her, Faith giggles.

( _not real_ )

Rook hooks her shirt up over her nose, thin protection from the motes of pollen drifting up from the body. The utility knife slips a little in her sweaty grasp. (The moth opening and closing its wings on the back of her hand  _isn't real_.) She cuts a straight line in the Angel, neat and clean as a butcher, from navel to breastbone.

Bliss flowers spill out.

Petals and leaves unfolding to the open air as skin and muscle divide under the knife. Marbled pink with bits of organ and blood.

Rook's gut twists. The plants are rooted  _inside_ the Angel's lungs. Growing up through throat and nose. Rustling with every wheezing breath.

She throws up. Turning to one side, a hot splash of bile on the rocks. Acid thick in her throat.

Faith's laughter rings in her ears as she pants and heaves.

It wasn't just Burke. There's Bliss inside all the Angels. In the water, and the air. The whole county would be blooming if spring ever came.

What else has she never seen, hidden in the folds of time winding around her like tangled sheets? Blanketing the truth from view. While she sleepwalks through the same tired motions, oblivious.

Her vision blurs, blue-red as the world briefly tears in two.

Everything doubled.

A mouthful of whiskey rinses away the vomit. But not the sparkle-shock of Bliss in her system. Rook drinks a solid finger-length before she throws the bottle at the wall. It explodes against the rocks in a fiery burst of red and yellow flame. Glass shards crashing down.

Her throat burns too, a reassuring scorch to prove there's no Bliss in her. No delicate vines branching through her veins and arteries. No thin green strings to pull her little puppet-arms and -legs.

Coughing, she staggers back to the flooded cavern.

From this side, she can see the Bliss barrels sunken under the water.

An illusion of Faith danced out on the surface in a hazy beam of light. Humming old church music as she spins. ( _I_ _once was, once was_ )

Rook reaches for her gun, to shoot the hallucination silent, but finds herself holding the radio insead.

"John?"

She hates stupidly shaken her voice sounds.

"John, can you hear me?"

There's no answer.

Because she's under a small mountain of rock. Blissed out and buried and the air flowing from the holes in the sky isn't enough to clear her head.

( _now I'm, now I'm found)_

Shaking, she sinks down.

"John?"

On the surface of the pool, Faith twirls in a circle. In and out of the sun. Smearing white after-images on the backs of Rook's eyelids.

Back to the wall, grinding one fist down in the rocks to anchor herself, she picks up a stone to throw.

But when she raises her fist, the illusion is already gone.

Pressing her knuckles to her mouth, Rook bites at the edge of her glove. Holding in a scream. It doesn't help. Curling up around her knees, staring at that white-blue patch of sky until everything around it blurs charcoal-red.

It won't be long now.

(Sixty-one days to burn.)

She'll wake up at Larry's any minute.

Any minute. She'll wake up.

* * *

He finds her eventually, tucked back against the rocks and half-swallowed by the gloom. Typically, she doesn't notice his arrival. Her knees drawn up and her face hidden from the light piercing the dark of the cave.

Small and pathetic.

"Deputy?" John calls across the water, voice magnified by the rocks. "I know you love the dirt, but don't you think you're carrying it a bit too far? This is hardly the ideal place for a nap."

He gets nothing.

Glancing at the barrels beside him, overflowing with Bliss, John bites his tongue in frustration. He told his people to clear the mine. Perhaps he should have been more specific about what constituted a  _mess_.

As usual, he has to clean it up himself.

"Saints fucking  _weep_ ," he huffs to the Deputy's distant form, stripping off his coat and folding it neatly over an empty crate. Tucking his sunglasses carefully on top. "I would think that a prophet would know better than to poke into damp, tight spaces pumped full of Bliss."

It hardly requires divine foresight to see  _that_ can only end in tears.

Toeing aside a bit of rusty metal, John wisely decides to keep his shoes on. As well as the now-familiar weight of the kevlar vest. He  _wants_ to trust the Deputy, but - until she's purged of sin - he can't be faulted for taking reasonable precautions.

Climbing down onto a submerged ledge, he sucks in a sharp breath at the clean, cold slide of water up his legs. Deeper than it looked. Undaunted, John swims across in swift strokes. Deriving mild pleasure from the pure chill of water streaming over him.

Splashing his way out again is less pleasant, but the sight of the Deputy - humbled at last - more than makes up for it.

He can't help but feel vindicated.

"Get up, Deputy," he commands, wiping water from his face and beard. "You're in desperate need of salvation, and there's work to do."

One dark eye peers out at him from the tight lock of her elbows and knees.

Up close, she looks even more miserable where she huddles among the dirty rocks. John's smile twists with a horrible, contemptuous sympathy. He knows what abject despair looks like. The Deputy has been teetering on the cusp of it since he left her last night, perhaps longer, and finally,  _finally_ she's tipped over.

The first step towards atonement is pain.

Wanting to drink in every second, John stands close enough to see the slight, trembling flick of an eyelid as she blinks.

"Get  _up_ ," he repeats, viciously delighted by the sight of her brought low.

Slowly, she shifts. Head tilting all the way back to see him. Bringing the radio she was cradling up to her mouth with a dazed expression.

"John?"

Quiet and foolish and lost, wide eyes clinging to him, and the realization of another desire hits John's angry pleasure like a shock of cold water.

"John?" she asks the radio again, careful.

It sounds so close to  _yes_.

"Right here, Deputy," he assures her, kneeling to pluck the radio from her unresisting hands. "I promise you, I'm not going anywhere."

Not now that she's finally called for him.

She doesn't say anything else, but her hand catches his wrist. The desperate grip tells him everything he needs to know: that his trials are over. After he'd all but given up on winning them salvation through anything but violence, she's finally reaching out. Her fingers clasping around his wrist, warm and strong.

The ugliness in his triumph washes away entirely under the influence of this long-awaited appeal. Leaving a cleaner kind of satisfaction behind.

More considerate than he would have been a minute ago, he waves a hand in front of her face.

Her eyes track the movement well enough to reassure him.

"You've had a touch of the Bliss," he tells her, drawing her to her feet by the arm. "The effects may be ... disorienting, but they will wear off in time. Though I can't speak for the headache you're in for."

The Deputy slips, her unsteady feet going out from under her.

John chuckles, shifting his own footing to support her weight, and eventually gets her turned properly so that he can sling her arm over his shoulder.

"I find," he says with a slight grunt of effort at her weight, "that the Bliss robs salvation of its ...  _personal_ nature. It deadens the mind, numbs the body. It renders you incapable of pain." His own arm wraps around her waist, hitching her close to his side as they stagger for the water.  "And without pain, well - how can you be sure that you've touched someone's soul?"

Her body is a strong line heat at his side, her wrist warm in his grip as he keeps her from falling away. Smiling a little, John decides that hauling her bodily all the way to Eden need not be so unpleasant after all.

"Don't worry, Deputy," he comforts her, "It's all worth it. And the Bliss  _will_ release you, soon. Perhaps after this you'll appreciate it when I say you should stay with me after your atonement. I'm much better company than Faith."

He can feel a tremor shiver in her limbs, a spinal flex that travels through her into him.

"Sh, slowly." He stops at the shore and steadies them both. "We're going to get a little wet."

Slurring a nonsense word, the Deputy flops her loose arm weakly.

John maneuvers them into the water in stages: lowering her to sit on the edge while he slides in first, and then coaxing her down into his reaching hands.

"The only thing I want to take from you is your sin," he promises, hooking an arm across her chest to tow her through the water. "And you will get so much more in return." Little wavelets break around them, lapping at their throats while he keeps their heads above water. "You just have to trust me. Just for a moment. You'll see. It's going to be beautiful."

Her legs kick uselessly alongside his, and he tightens his grip on her shoulder. He can be comforting when he wants. He really does empathize.

But in a moment, they reach the other side. The rough rocks slip under his hand, and he cautiously loosens his hold on her. Leaving her to float while he hauls himself up.

Shedding water, he lies on his stomach and braces himself to help her. The Deputy blinks at him, treading water in a floundering attempt to keep herself afloat. Smiling, John reaches down,

He puts a hand on her head, and shoves her under.

She goes down surprisingly easy, swallowed up in a ripple.

Anchored to the rocks with one hand, the other clenched tight in the Deputy's hair to keep her submerged, John chooses a passage from the Book at random and recites it from memory to the dark.

"You have heard the message, you have seen the divine light. That light is shining on you, in you. It radiates out from you. You are strong. You are just and pure. You do not belong in this world."

The Deputy begins to struggle, bubbles rising as she starts running out of air.

But she has to stay under, that's the whole point of cleansing, and John tightens his grip.

"You are chosen, worthy, deserving of life."

His voice rises over the thrash of her arms beating the water. Leaning precariously out to keep hold over her, he sputters as a wave from her flailing hits him full in the face. But he can't let her drag them both down. The last words cough out of him roughly, rushed but  _complete_.

"The new world and your new family welcomes you. Together, we will walk to the gates of Eden. This is the will of the Father."

She surfaces with a sputter, still fighting his hold.

Choking and twisting even as he drags her onto dry land.

As soon as she has leverage, she shoves away from him. Heaving out water and sin as she doubles up and coughs for air.

John, his purpose achieved, collapses to catch his own breath.

But he suffers a moment of temptation, watching her gasp and pant, both of them soaking wet in the dark privacy of the cave. His eyes catch on the thin fabric of her shirt clinging to her body. The twist and shudder of her shoulders. How her arms shake to support her as she arches and gags.

Her eyes, when they find him again, are dark. Hazed with Bliss and anger.

As usual, he's not at all prepared to hear what she has to say.

"Soylent green is people."

"... _What_?"

Voice raw, intense, she insists, "It's people."

John sighs.

Giving up the fantasy, he wrings water out of his beard. Why is he not surprised? She's as afflicted with nonsense as sin. And only one of them is a curable condition. But perhaps, he allows as he goes to retrieve his coat, he's being unfair. Perhaps she accidentally fell into a whole Bliss barrel on her way down.

No point in asking until it wears off.

The Deputy glares, cleansed but not confessed, stubbornly finding her own way upright as they shiver and drip together in the cold.

"How about we take this discussion out into the fresh air, hm?" John dares to set a hand on her shoulder, smiling when she doesn't shrug it away. "We're both soaked."

Steering her through the mine shafts, watching water slide down the hollow of her throat, John reminds himself that he is trying to be good.

It's pathetic, short-sighted and  _foolish_ to be swayed by earthly pleasures when and eternity of joy awaits in Eden. He can't let the sticky pull of his own sin drag him down. Not when he's gone to so much trouble just to get her cleansed.

He catches her by the arm when she trips, keeping hold as they grope their way to the exit.

He  _will_ remain resolute, in the face of wrath and all her other temptations.

"I am so looking forward to your confession after all," he tells her, mind already skipping ahead to the next step.

And the next and the next. All the way to Eden.

He leads them to the surface, stroking a gentle thumb down the inside of her elbow, and leaves the dark intimacy of the tunnel behind.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One step forward, two steps back for everybody! I adapted John's speech from chapter XIII of Joseph's book. He appears to be reading from it during the baptism scene, but none of the passages quite line up. So I figure he takes it upon himself to add a little personalized flair. Huge shout-out to everyone on tumblr who transcribed or reblogged Joseph's Word for the rest of us heathens! You guys are the real heroes.


End file.
